Andrea Anastasio on Ceramics, Fragility, and Crossing Disciplines

Andrea Anastasio, born in Rome in 1961, is a designer, researcher, and artist who has worked with Artemide, Danese, Memphis, and Design Gallery. He discusses his engagement with ceramics as a fragile material that challenges modern certainties. After years working with Murano glass, he began using terracotta in India in 1996 and later in Italy in 2006 for a project commissioned by Galleria Giustini in collaboration with Richard Ginori. He became artistic director of Ceramica Gatti in Faenza in autumn 2018, collaborating with Davide Servadei. Recent projects include an intervention in Capri and an exhibition in Amman with Stefano Arienti for the Giornata del Contemporaneo, supported by MiBACT and Darat al Funun. In Amman, he transformed industrially produced Kazakh carpets by perforating them and mounting them on Kurdish scarves made in Japan. He also manipulated Faenza ceramics for the same show. Upcoming projects include work in Bishnupur, West Bengal, reviving local terracotta and textile crafts; a ceramics exhibition at Galleria Giustini/Stagetti in Rome; a project with Arienti on Bruno Munari commissioned by Corraini in Bologna; and stage design for Mauricio Kagel's opera 'Mare Nostrum' in Marseille, curated by Davide Quadrio with Alessandro Sciarroni and Luciana Galliano.