VALENTINA GUIDI OTTOBRI ON THE ROLE OF THE ART CURATOR
Art curators are vital architects of the art world, acting as intermediaries between artists, artworks, and the public to shape cultural narratives. They are responsible for researching, acquiring, and displaying collections, while also providing critical context through, for example, essays and exhibitions that drive artistic innovation, support emerging artists, and define market trends. The curator emerges in a history of art, bringing different sets of professional circumstances along the way.
Today the word “curated” is bandied around somewhat, but what is the true job of an art curator?
What can their finely-honed skills bring to the art world or, more importantly, what effect can their relationship with artists have on the art itself? What they do is so crucial to an artist’s creative process, because the idea of “curation” has increasingly infiltrated our daily lives in recent years. And what is the role of a curator in an art context?
The origin of the word comes from the Latin “curare,” which means “caretaker.” For a long time, curators largely worked for museums or collections as the keepers of artworks and objects. Over the course of the 20th century, their purview has expanded to incorporate elements of a critic, tastemaker, and, at times, a position almost akin to an artist.
Valentina Guidi Ottobri is a visionary founder of VGO Associates, an innovative platform dedicated to bridging the worlds of contemporary art and design while mixing unconventional boundaries. Hailing from the historically rich city of Florence, Italy, Valentina’s career has been challenged by diverse experiences in dynamic cities such as Milan, London, and Mumbai, each imprinting their unique influences on her creative sensibility. With a animistic worldview, Valentina perceives vitality and soul in all that surrounds us; she believes that the sacred exists not only in monumental sites but also within the fabric of daily rituals and intimate gestures performed in our homes.
Her artistic philosophy is deeply entwined with the themes of mythology, metaphysics, and beauty. Valentina asserts that perhaps today, more than ever, we are called to embrace holistic rituals and reconnect with the symbols of our unconscious. In an age where the word “curated” proliferates in popular culture, she emphasizes the critical role of curators as caretakers—not only of art but of the deeper narratives that inform our understanding of it. As we transition from an era dominated by information to one defined by curation, we require dedicated individuals like Valentina, who nurture art and safeguard the essence of the artist’s vision within the spaces they create.
Art curators like Valentina serve as vital architects of the art world, acting as intermediaries between artists, artworks, and the public. Her work is about cultural stories by researching, acquiring, and displaying collections, and providing essential context through essays and exhibitions. Her work catalyzes artistic innovation, supports emerging artists, and influences market trends. Valentina’s deep engagement with this evolving role allows her to blend the responsibilities of a traditional curator with those of a critic and tastemaker, driving meaningful dialogue around contemporary art. Her educational background in literature, philosophy, and semiotics provides her with a robust framework for her curatorial practice. This foundation informs her understanding that every aesthetic choice carries ethical implications and that meaning arises from a constellation of interactions. Her experience at institutions like Palazzo Strozzi, alongside her current role in art curation and design buying at Printemps New York, positions her to craft narratives steeped in cultural significance. In these roles, she transforms spaces into immersive environments that resonate with audiences, inviting them to engage with themes of sustainability, transformation, and community.
Valentina’s mindset is ”curating means caring.’‘ With the rapid consumption of art and images today, she is able to create sanctuaries that inspire reflection and connection. Her work not only invites audiences to observe art but encourages them to actively participate in the rituals of meaning that art embodies. By merging storytelling with experiential design, she constructs environments that foster a sense of belonging and wonder. Her projects exemplify her commitment to sustainability and inclusivity, integrating reclaimed materials and promoting dialogue among diverse voices in art and design. Through her residencies and collaborative endeavors, she seeks to activate the potential of spaces, elevating them into vibrant ecosystems where creativity, ritual, and community intersect.
In every aspect of her practice, Valentina Guidi Ottobri demonstrates an unwavering dedication to shaping a poetic universe. Her life is a constant journey between art, life, and consciousness, reminding us that art should be an act of care—a conduit for connection, healing, and transformation that illuminates our shared human experience. Her vision continues to inspire a new generation of artists and curators, making an indelible impact on the contemporary art scene.
The future of art lies in creating emotionally immersive experiences and curating with depth while safeguarding our feelings, a lesson that Valentina Guidi Ottobri has imparted to us.
INTERVIEW WITH VALENTINA GUIDI OTTOBRI
TPM: Valentina, your work traverses the boundaries between the sacred and the surreal, exploring profound themes in contemporary art and design. Could you elaborate on the specific elements that inspire you within this intersection, and how these themes manifest in your creations?
My vision is rooted in a profoundly animistic sensibility: I perceive soul in all that surrounds us. Matter is never inert, and space is never neutral. The sacred does not belong to distant sanctuaries; it inhabits daily rituals, small, intentional gestures performed at home, with familiar objects, within spaces that become extensions of the self. The house transforms into a living organism: a nest of care and regeneration, yet simultaneously a theatre of experimentation. It shelters, but it also stages. Within it, conscious and unconscious coexist; night seeps into day, and dreams infiltrate the visible world. This quiet irruption of the oneiric into the everyday is where the surreal begins not as escape, but as transcendence of what is merely given.There is a shamanic dimension in this approach. I feel akin to a contemporary Pocahontas listening to the invisible currents that animate nature and matter. In certain strands of primordial astrology, this archetype corresponds to the rattlesnake: a creature of heightened perception, grounded yet vibrational, carrying both warning and wisdom. That symbolic resonance speaks to me. As with Sigmund Freud and Salvador Dalí, the unconscious is not an abstract theory but a living current. In this sense, surrealism does not merely influence me it flows through me.I feel a profound connection with Dalí’s visionary precision, with the luminous spirituality of Marc Chagall, with the mythic and symbolic reclamation of the Transavanguardia or Hill’s books, radical design and with the fluid identities and psychological multiplicity explored by Luigi Pirandello. Across these references runs a shared thread: the dissolution of rigid reality in favor of layered, symbolic truth. Transformation, for me, is the highest form of healing. To re-signify an object, to alter its context, to charge it with symbolic presence, is to restore its vitality. Magic is not spectacle but perception intensified. Sacredness is already embedded in every gesture. Everything depends on our gaze on how deeply we are willing to see, and how much meaning we are willing to allow into the world.
TPM: With your roots in Florence and experiences in dynamic cities like Milan, London, and Mumbai, how have these diverse environments influenced your artistic vision and shaped your approach to curatorship and contemporary design?
I was born on May 1st, 1988, in Florence, on the hills of Fiesole, from which the entire city unfolds like a Renaissance fresco. To grow up there is to inhabit the cradle of an international artistic consciousness. Among those terracotta rooftops, generations of visionaries once walked figures such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci leaving traces that continue to reverberate globally. Yet what has always fascinated me most about Florence is not only its aesthetic supremacy, but its ethical vision. The legacy of the Medici family embodies a radical act of faith: generations investing in works they would never see completed, building for a future beyond their own lifespan. This is what stands behind the Florence Cathedral: a belief in continuity, in beauty as responsibility. From there, I inherited a humanistic foundation. After Classical High-School, I graduated in Literature and Philosophy with a focus on Communication at the University of Siena, where I encountered Umberto Eco and the discipline of semiotics, the art of translating symbols into multiple layers of meaning. Semiotics became my operative lens. Whether directing a rebranding strategy, curating a museum exhibition, or designing an interior, I approach each element as a signifier. Every material, color, and spatial decision carries semantic weight. Meaning is not an accessory, it is the structure itself. This is why the spiritual dimension is inseparable from my practice: symbolism is the bridge between matter and transcendence. My perspective shifted decisively in Milan, where I studied Brand Management at Istituto Marangoni and later worked at Bottega Veneta under the creative direction of Tomas Maier. Those were formative, rigorous years leaving the office late at night alongside figures like Francesca Bellettini. It was there that I understood the vertical career path was not my destiny. I did not want hierarchy; I wanted authorship. At the time, Franca Sozzani and Steven Meisel were placing Kristen McMenamy on the cover as a tar-covered siren, a powerful denunciation of polluted seas. That image crystallized my aspiration: to bring urgent themes to light through visual language. I was twenty-three and restless. Instead of remaining a number within a structure, I began sending my portfolio to every editorial desk I encountered. One response changed everything: Marie Claire India, under Pearl Shah. I left Italy and moved to Mumbai with the man who is now my husband. Those six months were transformative. I encountered a chromatic and spiritual intensity that redefined my sensibility: women weaving garlands of flowers at dawn, carrying them to temples; apple greens and fuchsias erupting from dust and concrete; domestic rituals elevated to acts of devotion. In Mumbai, I witnessed how daily life itself can be ceremonial, how color, gesture, and repetition construct a living cosmology. Florence gave me historical depth and ethical vision. Milan revealed the mechanics of power, image, and craziness of design. Mumbai taught me ritual and vibrational color. Each city inscribed a different layer into my practice: humanistic structure, communicative precision, spiritual immediacy. Today, my curatorial and design approach stands at the intersection of these geographies. I work on meaning as architecture, on symbolism as infrastructure, on beauty as responsibility toward the future. Ultimately, my trajectory has never been about moving from one city to another; it has been about learning how to translate worlds into vision, and vision into form. I consider myself, above all, a seeker. I move through cultures in search of human and material treasures, forgotten crafts, lost traditions, symbolic vocabularies at risk of disappearing. I am interested in what can be rediscovered and reintroduced into our contemporary lives, not as nostalgia but as reactivation. Travel, for me, is a form of curatorial research: an ongoing dialogue with memory, identity, and transformation.
TPM: You mention moving beyond traditional methods of curatorship to incorporate storytelling and ritual into your practice. How do you integrate these elements into your projects, and what impact do you hope they have on audiences?
For me, moving beyond traditional curatorship means shifting from display to experience. I do not conceive an exhibition, a brand narrative, or a spatial project as a sequence of objects, but as a symbolic journey. Storytelling becomes the invisible thread that connects each element material, light, sound, text into a coherent ritual structure. Every project begins with listening. I research the cultural, social, and environmental context, identifying not only aesthetic references but also ethical urgencies. From there, I construct a narrative architecture: an emotional progression that guides the audience through thresholds, pauses, and revelations. The space itself becomes performative. The visitor is not a passive observer but an active participant in meaning-making. Ritual enters through repetition, gesture, and intention. It can be as subtle as the choreography of movement within a room, the tactility of sustainable materials, or the cyclical rhythm of programming that echoes natural processes. I am deeply attentive to environmental responsibility favoring reclaimed,low-impact, or locally sourced materials and to inclusive design principles that ensure accessibility, plurality of voices, and cultural sensitivity. Sustainability and inclusivity are not trends within my practice; they are structural commitments. They shape the narrative as much as the aesthetic. Storytelling also becomes a tool for environmental awareness. Rather than presenting data didactically, I translate ecological themes into symbolic language inviting emotional connection before intellectual comprehension. When audiences feel implicated, when they recognize themselves within a narrative, transformation becomes possible. Ultimately, I hope my projects generate a form of collective consciousness. I want audiences to leave not only informed, but altered to perceive their daily gestures, their domestic spaces, and their social responsibilities differently. If ritual reconnects us to intention, and storytelling reconnects us to one another, then curatorship can become an act of care: for culture, for community, and for the planet. My ambition is not to impose a vision, but to open a threshold where art, ecology, and human diversity converge into a shared, evolving narrative. We compose a constellation. No star exists in isolation; meaning emerges through relationship, through proximity, through the invisible lines we draw between one another. In my practice, this metaphor becomes operative. Every collaborator, every artisan, every client, every visitor is a luminous point within a wider symbolic cosmos. When aligned through dialogue and shared intention, these individual lights form an intelligible figure, an image capable of inspiring beyond its immediate time. I think again of the visionary environments of Niki de Saint Phalle and her Giardino dei Tarocchi: archetypes transformed into inhabitable constellations. They are not static monuments, but living galaxies of meaning, continuing to inspire generations because they were conceived from devotion and collective energy. To curate, then, is to compose constellations. It is to recognize the light in each presence and to create the conditions for those lights to resonate together. We are stars forming a universe fragile, interdependent, and extraordinarily beautiful. And when we become aware of this shared luminosity, we do not simply create projects; we generate worlds capable of guiding others, as constellations once guided travelers across unknown seas.
TPM: As the founder of VGO Associates, you create immersive environments and spiritual objects that challenge conventional distinctions between art and craft. Can you describe some of your most significant projects in this regard, and how they reflect your artistic philosophy?
As the founder of VGO Associates, my practice has always existed at the intersection of art, ritual, and human connection. Today, VGO functions primarily as an immaterial association, a network of residencies around the world where artists, designers, and thinkers gather to share knowledge, gestures, and symbolic practices. But its genesis is rooted in a very specific moment: during the COVID lockdowns, living in the countryside of Grasse, I began experimenting with forms and rituals that would define the association’s ethos. There, I produced my own deck of Tarot cards, created papier-mâché chandeliers adorned with faces, and invited artists such as Franco Raggi to inhabit the meadow, constructing domestic temples and exploring new ways of interacting with objects and space. It was a laboratory in the truest sense: an intimate, improvisational universe where creativity, ritual, and storytelling intertwined. These experiments became the blueprint for all subsequent residencies, where participants engage with space, matter, and narrative as co-creative tools. In this model, I act as both curator and facilitator. Every residency is conceived as a ritualized journey: thematic arcs, dialogues, and hands-on experiments allow each participant to encounter meaning physically, emotionally, and symbolically. Craft and art dissolve into one another; ephemeral objects, immersive activations, and shared gestures all carry ethical, ecological, and cultural significance. Sustainability, inclusivity, and human connection are embedded in the work as structural, not ornamental, principles. Ultimately, the residencies of VGO Associates are about activation and transformation. They are living constellations: spaces where creativity becomes ritual, objects become symbolic, and participants perceive themselves as part of a larger, luminous universe. The goal is not only to produce work, but to cultivate consciousness bridging tradition, innovation, and spiritual engagement, and offering experiences that resonate long after the residency ends. Vgo Associates is my crew of people from Artist to designers, brands, artisans, pioneers, youtubers, and Holistic masters from all over the world.
TPM: Your work invites individuals to reconsider their relationships with objects, spaces, and communities. In what ways do you envision this invitation materializing within your projects, and what responses do you hope to evoke from viewers?
My practice is premised on the idea that objects, spaces, and communities are not inert; they are active participants in the creation of meaning. Every installation, residency, or curated environment is conceived as a performative ecosystem, where participants are invited to reconsider the ordinary through the lens of ritual, symbolism, and narrative. In this sense, I take inspiration from institutions like the Tate Museum, where the dialogue between historical and contemporary practices encourages visitors to inhabit multiple temporalities simultaneously. Like the Tate’s exhibitions, my projects aim to create thresholds of perception of moments where the familiar is displaced, and the visitor becomes aware of their own agency in shaping meaning. I am also drawn to the theatricality and intimacy of the cabaret, where space, gesture, and performance coalesce into a living narrative. In my work, domestic or immersive spaces operate similarly: a chandelier is not merely a lamp, a table not simply a surface, but elements of a staged ritual where participants can enact, respond, and reflect. I cultivate a sense of choreography and improvisation, allowing each viewer’s presence to alter the atmosphere and the interpretation of the work. The invitation I offer is experiential: to engage with objects as carriers of memory and potential, to enter spaces that oscillate between sanctuary and stage, and to recognize the collective dimensions of creativity. The response I hope to evoke is curiosity coupled with recognition of a sense that their own gestures, attentions, and choices matter. Ideally, the encounter awakens participants to the poetic and symbolic potential embedded in their everyday lives, inspiring them to move through the world with heightened awareness, empathy, and wonder. In essence, the work functions as a living cabaret within a museum of consciousness, where the boundaries between creator, participant, and object dissolve, and where community emerges through shared perception and ritualized interaction.
TPM: Your curatorial narratives have been displayed in esteemed institutions like Palazzo Strozzi and featured in prominent publications such as Vogue and The New York Times Magazine. What qualities do you believe make these narratives effective portals that connect different realities and experiences?
What makes my curatorial narratives resonate as effective portals between realities and experiences is precisely the alchemy of structure, symbol, and story that underpins them. My work seeks to do more than present objects or images: it invites the audience to traverse thresholds, to move from the surface of perception into the deeper strata of meaning. This is the same quality that allows exhibitions at institutions like Palazzo Strozzi to transcend mere display and become living encounters with history, presence, and sensational moments where the viewer is not only informed but transformed. My narratives are grounded in a humanistic and semiotic foundation, shaped by my study of literature, philosophy, and communication and my early encounter with the discipline of semiotics under figures such as Umberto Eco. Semiotics taught me that meaning is never singular; it is a field of resonances, echoes, and associations that the audience is invited to activate. I conceive each project as a symbolic architecture: sequences of gestures, images, and spaces that function like constellations as in a tarot spread or a theater set where the spectator becomes an active interpreter rather than a passive viewer. By integrating mythic and ritual structures into curatorial frameworks, the work becomes a portal between realities, making visible what was previously unseen, and inviting the audience to re‑read their own relationship to objects, spaces, and community. This approach is echoed in the way my projects have been featured in international publications such as Vogue and The New York Times Magazine, where narratives were framed not as stylistic statements but as experiential and symbolic journeys, an invitation to perceive design, art, and space as interwoven dimensions of lived life. I aim to evoke responses that are simultaneously emotional, intellectual, and bodily: curiosity that leads to reflection, recognition that leads to empathy, and wonder that opens new perceptual pathways. In this sense, the work functions like a cabaret of ideas, a space of performance, ritual, play, and revelation where meaning is not handed down but activated in the encounter between the observer and the environment. The result is not only a dialogue between different realities, but a fusion of them: one where art, life, myth, and community converge into a single, ongoing narrative.
TPM: During your pivotal role at Luisaviaroma, you founded the design department and curated artistic installations. What key experiences from this time have influenced your approach to spatial storytelling, and how do these experiences inform your current work?
Today, I approach projects with a level of strategic and structural clarity that comes directly from my formative years at Luisaviaroma. There, I learned not only to conceive imaginative installations, but also to build them as sustainable, executable projects, how to secure financing, structure collaboration, and identify the formula that balances commercial viability with conceptual depth. Fashion, I realized, operates on a framework that is far more consolidated and agile than design. Its mechanisms, production cycles, marketing strategies, and global networks move in tandem with cultural shifts, enabling ideas to be realized and circulated efficiently. By contrast, design often lags behind, slower to formalize structures that allow experimentation to reach audiences at scale. My experience at LVR taught me how to translate visionary concepts into formats that are both meaningful and market-ready, allowing creativity to thrive without losing impact or accessibility. This dual lens imaginative and strategic, symbolic and pragmatic now informs every project I undertake, from immersive residencies with VGO Associates to curatorial narratives and spatial storytelling. It allows me to orchestrate experiences that resonate deeply while remaining structurally coherent, bridging the worlds of art, design, and commerce with intentionality and care. The process was both highly disciplined and deeply experimental: each installation functioned as a symbolic ecosystem, where architecture, objects, light, and movement converged to tell a story.
One particularly formative project was the 2016 installation Design on Water. In this exhibition, the fluidity of water became both metaphor and medium, shaping the way the audience navigated the space and interacted with objects. The work explored themes of transience, reflection, and relational perception: furniture and sculptural elements floated visually, surfaces mirrored light and movement, and visitors became aware of their own presence as an integral part of the narrative. It was an early exploration of ritualized interaction and spatial choreography, concepts that continue to inform my work today.
TPM: In 2020, Frame Magazine recognized your project “Land” for its poetic exploration of terracotta and the primordial relationship between humans and earth. Can you discuss the significance of this project and how it encapsulates your artistic exploration of materiality?
The project Land, recognized by Frame Magazine in 2020, represents a pivotal moment in my exploration of materiality and human connection to the primordial elements. Working with terracotta, a material as ancient as civilization itself allowed me to engage directly with the tactile, earthy substance that carries memory, ritual, and transformation. Every gesture, every imprint, every subtle variation in form becomes a trace of presence, a dialogue between maker and material. Land is not merely about objects; it is about embodied relationships. Terracotta becomes both medium and metaphor: a vessel for ancestral knowledge, a conduit for storytelling, and a reminder of our inescapable connection to the earth. The project explores the alchemy of creation, where human intention, physical labor, and natural material converge, revealing both fragility and resilience. In conceptual terms, Land embodies the same philosophy that underpins all my work: the idea that meaning resides in interaction, touch, and ritual, and that materiality itself can be a symbolic and transformative language. By foregrounding terracotta, I sought to reawaken awareness of our elemental roots, encouraging audiences to perceive not only the beauty of the form, but also the continuity between human creativity and the earth that sustains it. Following the publication, I was invited to join the jury of Frame, an honor sparked by a journalist who had focused primarily on the “beauty” of the terrace experience. I wrote a letter clarifying that the project intended much more: to bring the earth back into our homes, even amid the metallic grids of the city, to transform domestic spaces into healing oases, and to invite a journey within one’s own walls. Land was conceived not only as an exhibition but as an invitation to perceive the home as a sanctuary, a space where ritual, materiality, and imagination converge to nurture and restore.
TPM: Living between the enchanting landscapes of Tuscany and the South of France, how does your environment shape your creative process, and what themes or inspirations emerge as a result of this unique setting?
Living between the hills of Tuscany and the luminous countryside of the South of France profoundly shapes my creative process, not simply as scenery but as a living collaborator in every project. These environments teach me to respect cycles, rhythms, and temporalities, how the shifting light of dawn, the cadence of birdsong, and the seasonal progression of green can deepen awareness and nurture imagination. Waking with the day, breathing open air, and observing the ever‑changing foliage around me are not luxuries; they are the conditions in which creation thrives. In the South of France, one of the most intimate expressions of this dialogue between place and art has been La Chapelle de la Lune in Grasse. Conceived within the garden as a contemporary temple suspended between earth and sky, the space invites quiet inward reflection and a reconnection with cycles that are larger than the self. By mirroring floor and ceiling and invoking lunar symbolism and archetypes, the installation allows visitors to leave behind ordinary frames of reference and enter a symbolic realm attuned to nature’s rhythms. It is a place for elevation, return, and reconnection with roots a sacred enclave where the feminine, the cyclical, and the elemental converge. These landscapes where olive groves, scented winds, and starry nights compose a sensory choreography remind me that creation is a practice of listening. Nature teaches patience: we observe the hours, we honor the seasons, we learn that there is meaning in waiting as well as in action. The practice of living in such environments infuses my work with a temporal awareness that foregrounds longevity, transformation, and the poetics of lived experience. This sensibility emerges in projects that unify story, materiality, and ritual. Each space I design becomes a portal between inner and outer worlds, inviting participants to slow down, to feel, and to perceive the sacred within the ordinary. The constant interplay of light, wind, and earth becomes a kind of co‑author, shaping not just what I make, but how and why it matters. In these landscapes, the act of creation is never separate from the act of being present and that is the most profound inspiration of all.
TPM: At Printemps New York, you lead art curation and design buying. Could you describe how you craft immersive spaces that support a new generation of emerging artists while integrating heritage craftsmanship brands from around the world?
At Printemps New York, my role in art curation and design buying is rooted in one central ambition: to transform retail into a cultural ecosystem. I do not approach the space as a commercial container, but as a living stage where emerging voices and heritage craftsmanship can enter into meaningful dialogue. To craft immersive environments, I begin with narrative architecture. Each floor, each vignette, each curated selection responds to a thematic thread, one that connects contemporary experimentation with ancestral savoir-faire. I actively seek out a new generation of artists whose practices challenge conventions, expand social discourse, and engage with sustainability and identity. Alongside them, I integrate heritage brands from diverse geographies workshops and maisons that carry generational knowledge in their techniques, materials, and rituals of making. The dialogue between these two worlds is essential. Emerging artists bring urgency, criticality, and conceptual expansion. Heritage craftsmanship brings depth, continuity, and embodied memory. Within the space, they are not separated by hierarchy; instead, they are placed in conversation. A sculptural work may stand beside a handwoven textile brand from South America, a ceramic practice rooted in Mediterranean traditions, or a Japanese atelier preserving centuries-old techniques. The goal is to create constellations of meaning, where the visitor perceives lineage and innovation simultaneously. Immersion is achieved through spatial choreography: lighting that directs emotion, materials that invite touch, soundscapes that soften the boundary between contemplation and discovery. I am attentive to inclusivity and global representation, ensuring that the selection reflects multiple cultures and narratives. Sustainability is equally structural, prioritizing responsibility. The most recent installation I curated was centered around the visionary practice of Elena Stonaker, whose work beautifully exemplifies the intersection of myth, ritual, and material re-imagination. Stonaker’s practice spans textiles, sculpture, painting, and immersive experience, grounded in archetypal language and symbolic resonance. For the Art & Circularity program, she transformed the façade of the building into a visionary garden of giant dolls crafted from upcycled fabrics, alongside intricate tapestries and woven sculptures made from repurposed materials. This installation was not decorative but embodied an environment where softness, softness, and mythic presence invited visitors to reconsider what sustainability can look and feel like. Stonaker works with reclaimed cloth, beads, and hand-stitched surfaces that evoke both comfort and ritual, creating spaces that oscillate between sanctuary and ceremonial ground. The production, transparent sourcing, and designers who rethink material cycles.
TPM: In your collaborations with various companies and cultural institutions as a creative director, how do you infuse your visionary lens into these projects, and what transformative narratives do you aim to cultivate through these partnerships?
In every collaboration with companies, cultural institutions, or independent platforms I begin from a position of deep listening. Before proposing a vision, I seek to understand the cultural DNA, historical sediment, and future aspiration of the partner. My role as creative director is not to impose an aesthetic, but to reveal an inner mythology that may already be present yet unarticulated. I infuse my lens through narrative structure. Each project becomes a story-world: a sequence of symbols, spatial gestures, materials, and images that articulate a coherent philosophy. My background in semiotics allows me to decode and recompose identity into layered meaning ensuring that branding, exhibition design, communication, and spatial experience speak the same language. I work simultaneously on the visible and invisible dimensions: what is shown, and what is felt. I am interested in cultivating narratives that bridge heritage and contemporaneity, craftsmanship and innovation, local specificity and global consciousness. Often, this means repositioning a company not simply as a producer of goods, but as a cultural agent one capable of addressing environmental responsibility, inclusivity, and the emotional lives of communities.
TPM: With a strong foundation in the humanities and notable achievements in subjects such as philosophy and art history, how do these academic experiences inform your artistic practice and decision-making processes today?
My foundation in the humanities is not a chapter of my past, it is the operating system of my present. Studying philosophy, literature, and art history trained me to think structurally, to question appearances, and to search for the invisible frameworks that shape what we see. It taught me that every aesthetic choice carries an ethical implication, and that every image belongs to a lineage of references, ruptures, and reinterpretations. Philosophy gave me the discipline of doubt and the courage of abstraction: the ability to hold complexity without simplifying it. Art history trained my eye to recognize continuity and fracture to understand how forms migrate across centuries, how symbols evolve, and how cultural movements respond to social and political shifts. This awareness informs every decision I make, from selecting a material to constructing a narrative arc within a space. My academic encounter with semiotics was particularly formative. It refined my sensitivity to signs and systems of meaning, teaching me that objects, colors, proportions, and spatial arrangements are never neutral. They communicate. Today, whether I am curating an installation, directing a brand, or developing a residency program, I approach each element as part of a semantic constellation. I ask: What does this signify? What memory does it evoke? What future does it suggest? The humanities also instilled in me a sense of responsibility. To create is not only to produce it is to position oneself within a broader cultural discourse. My decision-making process is therefore layered: aesthetic intuition is always accompanied by historical awareness, symbolic coherence, and ethical consideration. Ultimately, my academic formation allows me to move fluidly between analysis and imagination. It anchors my visionary impulses in critical thought, ensuring that even the most poetic or immersive projects remain intellectually grounded and culturally resonant.One of my most important aspirations is to bring my work into public institutions particularly hospitals and care homes where symbolic and spatial transformation is not a luxury, but a necessity. I believe that environments shape emotional and physiological states. In places dedicated to healing, space often becomes purely functional, stripped of poetry and ritual. Yet these are precisely the contexts where beauty, meaning, and sensory care can have the most profound impact. My goal is to contribute to the re-imagination of such institutions as sanctuaries of dignity and hope, where light, materiality, color, and narrative actively support the healing process. Drawing from my experience in immersive installations and ritualized domestic spaces, I envision creating environments that feel less clinical and more human where natural materials reconnect patients to the earth, where symbolic forms offer psychological anchoring, and where communal areas foster dialogue rather than isolation. The intention is not decorative embellishment, but emotional architecture: spaces that soothe anxiety, encourage reflection, and restore a sense of belonging.
TPM: You demonstrate a preference for visual expression over written communication. How do you utilize onomatopoeic and descriptive language in your writing to effectively convey your artistic vision to your audience?
I have always felt that images arrive before words. My thinking is fundamentally visual and spatial; I perceive atmospheres, textures, and symbolic relationships long before I articulate them verbally. Writing, for me, is therefore not a linear explanation, it is an attempt to translate vision into vibration. When I use onomatopoeic or descriptive language, it is because I want the reader to feel rather than simply understand. A space does not merely “exist”; it breathes, it hums, it whispers. Materials do not simply “reflect light”; they shimmer, they glow, they crackle softly under touch. These sonic and sensory inflections allow language to approximate the physicality of experience. I aim to make writing tactile to give it rhythm, cadence, and atmosphere. Descriptive language becomes a tool of immersion. Instead of explaining a concept analytically, I often construct an image that can be entered: a terrace warmed by terracotta, a meadow vibrating with wind, a chandelier that seems to murmur in the dusk. The goal is not ornamentation but embodiment. If the reader can sense the temperature, the density of air, the texture of a surface, then the idea has already crossed into perception. This approach mirrors my curatorial practice. Just as I choreograph space to guide movement and emotion, I choreograph language to guide imagination. Words become scenography. Syntax becomes pacing. Silence between phrases becomes negative space. Ultimately, my writing seeks to operate as my installations do: as a threshold. If visual expression is my primary language, then descriptive and onomatopoeic nuances are the bridge that allows others to enter that inner landscape transforming text into an experiential field rather than a static explanation.
TPM: You emphasize the importance of continual learning and discovery in your life and work. What specific strategies do you employ to remain open to new ideas and experiences, both personally and professionally?
For me, continual learning is not a strategy alone it is a posture toward life. It begins with humility: the awareness that every person, place, and discipline carries knowledge I do not yet possess. Remaining open means resisting crystallization, refusing to become stylistically fixed or intellectually complacent. One of my primary strategies is movement. I travel not as a consumer of images but as a listener seeking forgotten crafts, local rituals, and marginal voices. Residencies, studio visits, conversations with artisans, time spent in nature: all these are forms of research. I deliberately place myself in unfamiliar contexts where I must observe before acting. Displacement sharpens perception. Another essential practice is cross-disciplinary dialogue. I maintain ongoing exchanges with philosophers, designers, scientists, curators, and spiritual practitioners. Innovation often happens in the interstices between fields. By stepping outside my immediate discipline, I prevent my work from becoming self-referential. I also cultivate silence and reflection. Living close to nature has taught me to respect cycles to allow periods of incubation as much as production. Not every idea must be immediately executed; some must mature quietly. Reading remains central to my process, particularly texts that challenge my assumptions or expand my ethical and cultural frameworks. Professionally, I embed experimentation into structure. Even within commercial or institutional collaborations, I carve out space for research, prototyping, and dialogue. I ask teams to question initial briefs, to test materials, to reconsider hierarchies. Curiosity becomes collective rather than individual. Ultimately, I remain open by embracing vulnerability the willingness to not know. Discovery requires risk, and growth requires permeability. My aim is to live and work in a state of attentive evolution, where each project is not a repetition of mastery but an opportunity to encounter something unexpected and allow it to transform me.
TPM: The interplay of mythology, metaphysics, and beauty seems to be a recurring theme in your work. How does this interplay reflect your ongoing journey in shaping your poetic universe, and what future explorations do you foresee in this domain?
Human Design defines me as a Manifestor, and this framework has offered a strikingly clear mirror of how I move through the world. I am aligned when I initiate when I catalyze ideas, activate spaces, and give momentum to visions that did not previously have structure. My creative process begins with an impulse, almost energetic, that seeks form. I do not wait for permission; I respond to an inner call to begin. From there, mythology, numerology, and Tarot become languages that help me refine and articulate that impulse. Tarot, especially, is a curatorial tool for me: a symbolic map of archetypes that mirrors the way I construct narratives in space. Numerology sensitizes me to rhythm and sequence the invisible architecture behind form. These systems do not dictate my work; they illuminate it.The interplay of metaphysics and beauty is therefore deeply personal. I create environments that feel initiated rather than assembled spaces charged with intention, where symbolism operates subtly but powerfully. Beauty becomes the access point, mythology the structure, and energetic awareness the driving force. Mythology allows me to work with figures and narratives that transcend time. Archetypes are collective memories; they belong to everyone. When I reference symbolic systems whether through ritual objects, spatial choreography, or immersive installations I am not quoting the past, but activating it in the present. Myth becomes a bridge between personal experience and collective consciousness.
TPM: Living in the NOW is crucial, but what would you write in a short note to your future self?
Dear Self,
Remember that the present is the only canvas every thought, gesture, and breath is material for creation. Keep chasing for depth, curiosity, and connection. Keep listening to the world, to nature, to intuition especially the whispers that feel impossible to articulate. Trust your impulse to manifest, but balance it with reflection; let ritual, beauty, and meaning guide your steps. Honor the spaces you create not only for others, but for yourself. And above all, never forget: you are both the observer and the universe in motion. Keep wandering, keep dreaming, and keep letting your poetic universe unfold.
Strive to have an impact on people’s lives by bringing inspiration, love, and light, even into the corners where it seems absent. Keep creating spaces, objects, and moments that nurture, heal, and awaken wonder.
Stay present, honor intuition, and let your poetic universe guide you. Manifest boldly, care deeply, and never forget that you carry the sun wherever you go. — Valentina
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