Amanda Chiarucci's Golden Venture Origami Sculptures

Amanda Chiarucci (Cesena, 1974) creates complex paper sculptures using the Golden Venture origami technique, inspired by the 1993 Golden Venture shipwreck where 286 Chinese migrants, mostly from Fujian province, were stranded off New York. Ten drowned; survivors detained in federal prisons began making origami from recycled paper. Chiarucci's work connects this migration story to her own family history—her mother was born in Argentina to a Russian father, with other relatives from Georgia. She studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti, initially focusing on performance before dedicating herself to Golden Venture origami from 2013. Each sculpture comprises thousands of hand-folded paper triangles, assembled into intricate structures. Her studio in Meldola (Forlì-Cesena), a former butcher shop once owned by her grandfather and father, is filled with secondhand books on mathematics, labyrinths, chakras, and quantum physics that inspire her forms. A single sculpture can require up to 30,000 modules and six months of work, with assistants handling the folding. In 2026, her works will be exhibited at Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie in Bielefeld, Germany, in collaboration with Galleria Rino Costa.