Von Buren Contemporary proudly presents Threads, a compelling duo exhibition that brings together two Italian artists, Caterina Giglio and Lau_Lana, who illuminate the intimate, tactile world of thread and fiber. The show unfolds over a weekend opening and remains on view through early spring, inviting visitors to experience a cross-pollination of drawing, painting, and textile practice.
Caterina Giglio, born in Rome in 1970, is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice blends painting, drawing, and mixed media with a theatrical sensibility. Her works are densely populated with numerous fairy-tale figures—both human and non-human—that emerge from an intricate weave of ornaments, lines, and textures. This abundance creates a frenetic yet dreamlike atmosphere that recalls the fantastical worlds of late Victorian illustration while remaining deeply contemporary in cadence and gesture. Giglio’s visual poetry often centers on powerful female figures as symbols of sensuality, motherhood, wisdom, and acceptance, composing a fluid, universal universe where corporeal forms stretch toward the sky and transform through a Matisse-like dance.
Giglio’s biography reflects a rich engagement with performance and scenography: she spent eleven years in the theater as an actress, costume designer, and set designer, experiences that inform her approach to imagery, proportion, and narrative layering. Her commitment to creative recycling—reimagining vintage objects into unique artworks—also marks her practice with an eco-conscious and inventive spirit. Since 2016 she has focused primarily on painting and drawing, and in 2024 Rome’s Palazzo Velli hosted a retrospective survey of her work, underscoring the breadth of her artistic development.
Lau_Lana was born in Jesolo, a seaside town near Venice, in 1998. Her early pathway began with fashion studies, but her grandmother’s tutelage in embroidery during childhood revealed that this ancient craft was her true vocation. The seaside landscape of her youth deeply informs her practice: she “paints” with wool thread on canvas to reproduce beach scenes where the colors, patterns, and intricacies of bathing costumes, deck chairs, and towels dominate the composition. This tactile, textile approach reinterprets traditional embroidery as a contemporary form of painting-stitch, turning the canvas into a stage for color, texture, and light.
Her work is characterized by a strong connection to her home region and a sustained focus on women, which informs both subject matter and method. Lau_Lana’s canvases—woven with bright, saturated wool—offer intimate glimpses into female life and leisure, capturing moments that feel both documentary and dreamlike. By translating craft into fine art, she transforms meticulous handwork into a powerful visual language that speaks to memory, place, and gendered experience.
Threads brings these two practices into dialogue around a shared devotion to making with the hands. Giglio’s dense drawings and paintings act as networks of narrative threads, while Lau_Lana’s wool-on-linen canvases unravel the physicality of thread into color, form, and atmosphere. The juxtaposition highlights how thread, fiber, and process can shape meaning—whether as drawn traces that accumulate into complex scenes or as woven lines that construct tangible, textile paintings.
Photo credits: Von Buren Contemporary
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