Per filo e per segno – 4/12. Antonio Marras

Antonio Marras

Anime

2026

glazed ceramic, clothes

site-specific

variable dimensions

 

From April 10th to May 6th 2026, BUILDING BOX presents Anime (2026) by Antonio Marras (Alghero, 1961), the fourth installation of the exhibition project Per filo e per segno. Percorsi di arte tessile in Italia.

 

For the occasion, BUILDING BOX presents a display designed specifically for the space, drawing inspiration from the atmosphere of the place. The display windows become, in fact, a small temple within which Marras places a series of vertical elements evoking caryatids. In this instance, the figures are replaced by women’s garments hanging from glazed ceramics—somewhere between reliefs and sculptures—on which small holes appear. Clothes become Anime that cross the space, and it is as if they maintain a connection with the bodies that once wore them.

 

“I am an animist” states Marras, in his regenerative desire. The garments from different eras and places, which characterize the installation, were selected from his vast archives of discarded clothing from all over the world. For Marras, journeys are an opportunity to explore forgotten, anonymous, or hidden stories, outside the realm of officialdom, where each element retains a trace of its origin within an investigation that avoids any form of standardization.

Marras acts as an archaeologist of the present, bringing vanished lives back to life, and he does so through concrete interventions on materials, which are reconfigured in a gradual shift of meanings.

 

On fabrics, as well as on ceramics or paper, Marras intervenes with embroidery, patches, cracks, tears or stitches, in keeping with the cross-disciplinary nature of his research.

 

His works are visual creations, fragments of a reality that takes shape and fades away before our eyes, where the artist confronts us with an ambiguous and problematic message, far removed from any possible linear interpretation. The artwork, after all, does not seek perfection, but instability, engaging with our emotional dynamics. This is clear in the installation created for BUILDING BOX, featuring fabrics and ceramics that belong to the same visual process.

 

Regardless of the materials, there is no methodological difference in his interventions, and the customized garments are hung on objects where matter and gesture are central, with a broken geometry, overlapping planes and imperceptible fractures in a continuous dialectic between construction and deconstruction. To quote Georges Didi-Huberman (Saint-Étienne 1953), a ‘resemblance through contact’ is thus produced.

 

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From January 15th 2026 to January 7th, 2027, BUILDING BOX presents Per filo e per segno. Percorsi di arte tessile in Italia, an exhibition project curated by Alberto Fiz involving twelve Italian artists from different generations, invited to reflect on the theme of contemporary textiles. Throughout 2026, the exhibition will offer a selection of tapestries, clothing, installations, sculptures and site-specific works in twelve individual monthly installations. The artists featured in the second quarter of the exhibition project are Antonio Marras (Alghero, 1961), Maria Lai (1919–2013), and Paola Pezzi (Brescia, 1963).

 

The last decade has been characterised by an increasing focus on textile art, which has established itself as one of the most vital languages of contemporary art. The reasons for this can be found, first and foremost, in its ability to restore a central role to the matter and the body in an era dominated by digital technology. Although the use of textiles is nothing new – just think of the fabrics of Fortunato Depero (1892-1960), the carpets of Giacomo Balla (1871-1958) or the tapestries of Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994) what has emerged is an unbiased, often provocative and transgressive process that has involved contemporary artists and, at the same time, has made it possible to highlight some central figures in art history, especially women, who have long been marginalised.

 

Furthermore, the uniqueness of textiles lies in how they have given rise to an autonomous language, with its own expressive matrix understood as a critical device capable of questioning all forms of hierarchy, according to a renewed awareness that can be traced back to the 2017 Venice Biennale, Viva Arte Viva, curated by Christine Macel, who had built her reflection starting precisely from textile art.

The exhibition project presented by BUILDING BOX aims to connect Italian artists from different generations by developing a fluid, all-encompassing journey that highlights the potential of a versatile, malleable and environmentally sustainable material, where tradition, memory and modernity intersect without rigid formalisation. At the same time, fibers, textures, knots and weaves become relational tools capable of redefining space and the relationship between individuals.

Per filo e per segno aims to make an innovative contribution to the debate on textile art, which on this occasion develops around different perspectives, offering a broader vision with the inclusion of a variety of works such as tapestries, clothing, installations, sculptures and site-specific works, many of which are new projects created specifically for this occasion, confirming how fabric is not only a technique but also an innovative approach to reality and image. Beyond the poetic and stylistic prerogatives, there is a unifying feature that can be traced throughout the exhibition, namely the intimate, in some ways autobiographical, aspect of the research, which is not without attention to the manual component, radically opposing the standardisation and dematerialisation of contemporary society. Per filo e per segno therefore aims to be a meticulous and detailed journey that contemplates the minimal unity of the textiles and the pattern that emerges when the threads are woven together. All this with the aim of generating a new plot through twelve chapters. The three artists hosted during the first quarter were Numero Cromatico (an artistic collective founded in Rome in 2011), Paola Anziché (Milan, 1975), and Maurizio Donzelli (Brescia, 1958).