Unurgent Argilla

Visit to the exhibition and practical demonstration of ceramic modeling with the artist Nina Salsotto Cassina  (from 3 pm to 6 pm).

On the occasion of Milan Design Week 2023, Fondazione Officine Saffi opens the doors of its laboratory by inviting the public to participate in a close encounter with the experimental practice on natural clays of the artist and designer Nina Salsotto Cassina. The initiative, part of the Unurgent Argilla exhibition, will accompany the public in a story and a practical demonstration on the possibility of defining a new system of mapping and narrating the territory through ceramic modeling.

Within the exhibition, Salsotto Casina will dialogue with the public by presenting the series of ceramic works made with soils she collected in over thirteen natural clay deposits. The story of the exhibition will be an opportunity to discuss reasons and opportunities that have suggested to the artist to return the creative act to the same territory of the material with which it is made, working in direct contact with clay in the context of natural stratification where this can be collected.

The visit, accompanied by an illustration of the rich apparatus of work tools and sources from which Salsotto Cassina draws, will be completed in the laboratory spaces with a practical demonstration which aims to restore this dimension of "listening" and storytelling of the territory through the various stages of processing of the material. Previously analyzed in a series of tests, the artist will in fact select two samples of natural clays different in chemical and mineralogical composition, thus showing the public how to model spherical vases on the lathe that preserve the uniqueness of the physical properties of the material that inspired their creation.

Unurgent Argilla (demo)nstration is an event promoted by the Municipality of Milan as part of Milan Design Week.