SILVIA BECCARIA

Born in Turin in 1965, Silvia is an artist and textile designer in the field of “Fiber Art”, which since its inception during the Sixties has been characterized by the use of natural and/or artificial fibers in works of art. Silvia uses hand-weaving techniques, playing with them in total freedom. With a perfect symbiosis of hands and mind, she breaks the rules and yet is mindful of the heritage of ancient methods. She looks into the past, while expressing herself with the contemporary language of research and experimentation.

Through the years, she has in fact come up with non-conventional fabrics intertwining silk, wool, linen, cotton, as well as plastic tubes, bubble-wrap, different metals, paper, thin pieces of aluminum and rubber, achieving original and unique effects thanks to the materials themselves. Thus fiber – whether it is wool, rubber, paper, metal, or plastic – is the linguistic instrument that allows Silvia to conceive and give birth to the ideas she designs and creates at the loom.

Her materials and loom guide and translate what her heart and mind suggest to her, making her emotions and her frame of mind visible. Her experiments yield sculpture-dresses that are designed to be used in everyday life as wearable art, or as clothing “objects” that have nothing to do with fashion anymore. Her tapestries, installations and contemporary jewellery revel a personal poetics in which materials bow to the needs of language.

Silvia discovered her passion for hand weaving at a very young age, charmed by the sight of fabric, starting from mere thread, growing between her fingers.

After achieving a degree in Philosophy and a master in Art therapy from Turin’s University, she started studying textile design and specialized in fiber art under the guidance of noted artist Martha Nieuwenhuijs.

From 1993 to 2004 she produced teaching projects in which weaving was used as a means for rehabilitation and education, both as a consultant to various facilities for psychiatric patients, convicts and minors at risk, and as weaving technician in the social-educational day center “Il Mosaico” for disabled teenagers, in Fossano (Cuneo).

Since 2002 she has curated and planned, with Marina Costantino, some of the initiatives regarding textile art for the Educational department of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Rivoli.

Silvia designs and produces sculpture-dresses, contemporary tapestry , installations and contemporary jewelry. She takes part in many art exhibitions in Italy and abroad.

Her work is showcased in various fiber art permanent collections.