Eight stories, eight projects, eight womens. “I Fiori della Materia” is the collective exhibition part of “In Women’s Hands” the Superstudio’s programme which combines professional designers attentive to material and their processing. An in-depth study of their research, passion and creative power but also choices, paths and challenges they have faced in life. On show until October 29 to discover female creativity, including unconventional works and unpublished stories. Focus on Mavi Ferrando.

"After an already creative childhood, the art school in Genoa and the Politecnico in Milan, my first job was at Olivetti where there was maximum openness to creativity and almost no budget limitations. In 1972-73 the Corporate Image Service was established and it was a tragedy for me. It was necessary to standardize and normalize everything: type of furniture, walls color, kind of lighting, etc... The profound rebellion against this form of approach made me sick. Whatever was available on the market was a total bore: desks, chairs, wardrobes were all the same, skeletal, differing from each other in small details such as the screws type employed and where they were placed. I told myself: once furnishing elements were empathic, they created a link with those who owned them, they had articulated and distinctive formal qualities. They created affection. Now desolation. Exasperated functionalism and mass production had, at least for me, killed creativity and items details... Through drawing I blowed off my dissatisfaction with a figurative contestation: free shapes with a light bulb that looked like lamps, empty backrests where it was impossible to lean on and which still seemed like seatbacks. It was all about perception linked only to appearance because if the object did not allow the function it meant that it was something else, a sculpture?However, seeming something specific, through the absurd it represented a change concrete proposal for what surrounds us, an induction to renew design by also reappropriating, why not, of some past exaggerated shapes. I went on creating a series of full-scale works that I then exhibited during a solo exhibition in 1976 with Anty Pansera presentation who defined my works as trompe-design. The works on display here are part of that period. I will stop here and I share works and poetics of 44 years ago. I quit my job at Olivetti and many things happened afterwards."