Caterina Roppo is an artist who lives between Italy and Mallorca. Her work, influenced by her personal experiences and inspired by nature, reflects collective memories and universal symbolism. We first met Caterina during the international contemporary art competition, Arte Laguna Prize. With her, a wonderful synergy was born, evolving into a fruitful exploration of the potential of materials, bridging art and design.

How did your artistic journey begin?
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It began at Polimoda, in Florence. It was the first year when the director was Linda Loppa, a Belgian designer who was very important for the history of fashion, and who gave my generation a very strong imprinting, definitely artistic and very little related to the commercial theme. I for example graduated with a project that touched on both art and design, I created a giant lamp using videotape tapes, and even the clothing was made in the same woven material. After graduation I stayed in Florence and, while working for a fashion brand, I continued with photography, research, experimentation. Florence, if one has a story to tell, is the right place, because one is listened to and welcomed, there is a lot of openness from the cultural point of view.

When did you start working with fabric, which then became your alphabet?
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At some point I left my job in Florence and moved to Milan where I opened, together with other partners, a first art direction agency and a second one specialized in identification of new trends. I was running the research department of Milano Unica, I had created a team of artisans and artists where craft experimentation anticipated industrial experimentation, creating textile elements and experimenting with new technologies. We explored the issue of sustainability in textiles by launching the Save the Planet project, promoting dialogue with companies that wished to invest in change for an industry with reduced environmental impact. To tell the truth at that time, while working with textiles, my medium of expression was writing. I was writing to explain the in-depth study on certain themes such as the material avant-gardes, color sensibilities and technological developments-supporting Antonella Matarrese, a journalist for Panorama, for the texts of our TrendBooks.

How did the Trayma project come about and when?
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It came about after another life change. I had an accident in which I almost lost my life and suffered from a long and deep post-traumatic stress disorder. It was a conviction and a blessing: discovering the meaning of life at the moment when I almost lost it made me perceive everything differently. During that time I realized how little we talk about mental health, and how little we are prepared to listen. I decided to start a project with which to communicate what I had experienced, my reflections. I wanted to create a living room to host artists, doctors, psychiatrists and creative people of all kinds, but I concluded that the best way to do this was through art, thus continuing my creative journey organically. Art is a vehicle without prejudice.The scar became my expressive symbol, precisely the scars in stone and abandoned ruins, because in these places linger echoes of lived lives, traumas and experiences, which through nature tell of resilience. I used the alphabet I know: textiles. I start with thread and make three-dimensional sculptures that tell life stories, bridges between annihilation and overcoming. The structure of Trayma's works has a very important engineering component-it could be considered an invention-that allows me to moderate yarn in space through heat.
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So is there a component of randomness in your works?
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Yes, absolutely. I am an artificer but also a creative medium, somewhere between the three-dimensional world and the world of being. I particularly care to maintain this component of randomness.

Speaking of genius loci. You were born in Apulia and live in Mallorca: what role has the landscape played on your art?
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It has been fundamental, also because Apulia has the same colors, the same scents and the same energy as Mallorca. The assonances are visceral; in Mallorca I made peace with the past.
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What evolutions has the Trayma project had so far?
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I believe that art cannot remain only in the conceptual hemisphere, but must be combined with craft, skill. And Trayma is a work that I started and want to continue within this hemisphere. Since I started with this project, everything happened very quickly. I felt an urgency, and at the same time, but I realized it later, everyone was starting to talk about this issue of mental health in different ways. TheVolume Series, for example, explores the experience of panic and the subsequent difficulty of communicating a condition that alters one's very perception of the world, almost losing one's sense of volume and surrounding space. With the SeriesDiscovery, one enters a phase of rebirth, in which newfound lucidity leads to the rediscovery of life and the pleasure of small things, a reappropriation of one's essence. Subsequently, a new awareness emerges, that of overcoming, the overcoming of trauma. Here the focus shifts from the personal to the universal: how does one arrive at such awareness in the absence of a shared experience? This question led Trayma toward a reflection on being without a world, laying the groundwork for a new chapter of the project, which engages the audience in a performative dimension, exploring the interaction between individual and collective.

When did you first meet Incalmi and how did your relationship evolve?
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I won a prize sponsored by Incalmi in the Arte Laguna Prize competition, and an elective affinity was born between Patrizia and me. She was impressed, more than by the project, by my research. Research on DNA and the discoveries that scientists have made in the area of epigenetics-that is, on the fact that trauma is passed on, through DNA, to one's children. This is something that they have studied in the survivors of the Holocaust and it's also very scary to me with respect to the wars that are going on right now. Talking about it with Patrizia, we decided to tackle, for the Arte Laguna Prize, the theme of feminicide, addressing the emptiness of those who are left behind and have to deal with trauma. And so we started working on the symbology of materials: stone, copper and fabric went to compose an installation.

And is it while you were doing this artwork that the material with which you made Galateo ancestrale was born?
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Yes, the new material emerged by experimenting together. I was enraptured by Incalmi 's courage in pursuing material research and investigation. We did some incredible, almost crazy experiments with fire. At one point we wanted to cover Trayma's stone and fabric with enameled copper, and this wonderful material was born.

What was it like to rework your work in object form?
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Once the material was made, I wondered how to contextualize it in space. At this stage once again Incalmi surprised me with its ability to confront. I worked on the theme of three-dimensionality, which for me is fundamental, because what differentiates my artworks from a normal fabric is that they move in space. I can't tell you how it all came about, it's as if it was the material, at some point, that asked to be reinterpreted. Together with Gianluca di Incalmi, with whom there was a beautiful design affinity, we imagined throwing the matter into the air, and the idea of a suspension, vertical and horizontal, was born. There is the same ritual propulsion in the vases.