THE CONTINUOUS THREAD, FROM WEAVING TO EMBROIDERY: IN CONVERSATION WITH GRAZIA INSERILLO

| by Barbara Pavan |

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to speak with the sicilian artist Grazia Inserillo (born in 1988) at a crucial moment in her artistic journey. What emerged was a deep and multilayered portrait, in which thread—understood not only as material but as a potent symbol—became a tool for anthropological and autobiographical investigation, a gesture of care, and a political act.

Inserillo’s practice was rooted in the legacy of the traditional crafts of her family, rediscovering and revitalizing the art of weaving and interlacing. From this ancient action, reinterpreted as a contemporary gesture, a body of work emerged that led to international exhibitions and brought her pieces into public and private collections. At the heart of our conversation, thread was never merely fiber. It served as a narrative and affective medium: “Each of us has skeins to unravel,” she told me. “For me, it’s essential to untie the knots to make room for the future.” Weaving thus became a dual movement: care and resistance, a gesture of salvation and a practice of memory. A ritual that—as she herself stated—carried an apotropaic and restorative value.

Unsurprisingly, her practice was deeply embedded in her biography, in that inherited and transformed femininity. Being a woman was not simply a condition, but a fundamental node of her entire visual and theoretical narrative. “I’m an artist who happened to be born a woman,” she said, quoting Louise Nevelson, and in that “chance” lay an entire genealogy of struggles, oppression, devotion, and redemption. Her origin in Isola delle Femmine—a name that only seemingly evokes idyll—revealed deeper and less conciliatory layers: not an homage, but a story of captivity and forced silence. It was precisely from that silence that Inserillo drew the strength to make the invisible present. In her work, the doily—emblem of a domestic and marginalized femininity—was transformed into a monumental suspended installation. From decorative detail to sculptural structure, from utilitarian object to political banner. The act of weaving is never neutral: it is an act of repair and denunciation, of survival and affirmation. Each knot is a declaration, each stitch a silent act of revolt.

Among her favored materials, wool held a central place—not only for its technical properties but for its symbolic resonance. Wool protects, envelops, retains warmth. It is the “maternal” material par excellence, and for this reason Inserillo associated it with the archetypal function of the woman/mother who nurtures, protects the hearth, and welcomes. The artwork thus became a welcoming place, a physical and tactile experience that engages the viewer in an intimate and direct way. Red, another recurring element in her work, is the color of sacrifice, blood, birth, and rebirth. It is a stigmatized color, deeply connected to the female experience, and in her work it also became a color of salvation. “You lose something to gain something else,” she said, and in this cycle of loss and regeneration, the essence of her poetics revealed itself.

The circular form—present in many of her installations—also symbolized a primordial femininity, a cyclical time that encompasses and regenerates all. The circle is the womb, the loom, the story that returns and knots itself again endlessly. It is an image of memory and, at the same time, of the future. In an artistic context often dominated by digital and multimedia languages, Grazia Inserillo’s textile work brought the body and materiality back to the center of the aesthetic experience. Crocheting became an act of resistance against ephemerality, a return to “making with the hands” imbued with a sense of origin and necessity.

Years after that initial conversation, I felt it was necessary to reconnect with Grazia Inserillo: to understand how her path had evolved, how the knots—those to be untied and those to be tightened—may have changed. A new encounter, then, to pick up the thread once more.

In recent years, your artistic research has undergone a significant evolution. In your view, what have been the main directions of this transformation, and which factors—biographical, conceptual, or contextual—have most influenced the trajectory of your work?

I would summarize these past five years (since our last conversation) into two key phases of work, in which I explored materiality — first “quantum” and then organic — in relation to touch, palpability, and the tactile qualities evoked as an essential sense for representation.

In the first phase, which lasted until 2023, I focused on suspended matter — a silent mass, floating and occupying space — and on the relationships (distances and attractive forces) between multiple elements. I delved into the notion of touch by starting from its very negation — intangible matter — drawing upon celestial, galactic, nebulous, and interstellar imagery. I embroidered the ungraspable, sublimating it through the use of ethereal and rarefied surfaces such as tulle, which I filled with dense, polychromatic galactic knots. I also created glittering, metallic vortices by pinning dressmaker’s pins directly into the tulle, where the tool itself defined the trajectory — without the use of thread. Furthermore, I began piercing the disorienting surface of white (or slightly ivory) paper with a needle, symbolizing the unknown, the unfamiliar, and the boundless. These gestures generated accumulations of void, swirling shadow-clouds, also devoid of thread.

In the past two years, however, I moved from quantum matter (perceived and perceptible, elevated, distant) to organic matter — which had already been present in a “cold” form as minerals composing celestial bodies. I began working directly with a material, teeming, muddy body, reclaiming touch and color. I created three-dimensional elements by crystallizing fiber in plaster and continued my dialogue with paper, this time embroidered with colorful organic forms. These five years can be traced along a vertical line: I stood at its center, first reaching upward — into the sky of possibilities above me — then downward, into the potential beneath me, like a zoom-in exploring the earth and subsoil, sinking my hands into the primordial humus.

Celestial life and earthly life: I followed the vertical axis of distance and closeness, guided by a single constant — my ongoing search for material juxtapositions, crafting visual textile oxymorons and integrating into them materials not traditionally associated with textile practice.

Biographically, I realize that when I first began embroidering as an artist (in 2014), I did so to forge bonds with absence. Later, I embroidered absence itself, attempting to bridge vast distances, to reach the unreachable. Finally, I plunged my hands into the earth — not too deeply into the roots of memory, but staying near the surface of the present, lightly scratching the crust to plant seeds I can accompany as they grow. I consider three solo exhibitions to be emblematic of this path, both in terms of chronology and artistic development: Il peso della coperta (The Weight of the Blanket) in 2020, Fino alle stelle (To the Stars) in 2023, and Un seme profondo (A Deep Seed) in 2025.

In your recent exhibition project Un seme profondo (“A Deep Seed”), embroidery emerges as a central medium. Could you tell us about the genesis of this exhibition and delve into the formal and symbolic dynamics underpinning the works presented?

Embroidery allowed me to literally sow my stitches/knots, scattering seeds across the surfaces of linen, hemp, cotton, papyrus, felt (obtained from merino wool felted by hand), and finally on yellowed papers. I engaged with dyeing fabrics and threads using dye plants, experimenting with the Japanese technique of Shibori; I kneaded plaster and fiber sculptures and revisited the intaglio techniques of aquatint, etching, soft ground, and drypoint (learned during my academy years), and I sowed on the prints as well.

For me, it was a form of archaeology: starting precisely from the fossil as both image and symbol, I arrived at the concept of reviviscence—that is, of a being coming back to life after a temporary period of death. Therefore, rather than fossilizing and crystallizing the life forms I was creating, my intent was precisely to “de-fossilize” them, shaking off the stone that had kept them motionless. The resulting image was that of many organisms breathing, regaining colour and vitality (I always envisioned Michelangelo’s Prigioni freeing themselves from the stone).

Thus, I wanted to restore life to various plant organisms — what I call “proto-botanicals” — and to animal microorganisms that are perhaps now extinct or still imprisoned in rock, as fossils.

The atmosphere is that of the primordial broth, where the boundaries between aquatic and terrestrial life forms are not yet clearly defined: they have cilia, stalks, stems, leaves, buds, corollas, seeds that blossom into flowers and into the colours of the earth (greens, yellow and red ochres, browns, indigo…), and within this primordial environment I inserted two deliberately symbolic elements, thus distinct from the earthly life forms — two “parents”: The First Sun, complete with wind/solar breath, and Milky Crust, Mother Earth also in formation, from whom the milk of life flows.

Finally, in harmony with the theme of reviviscence, I created the Linum series, in which I return to the linen fibre the microscopic image of the plant it once was — before becoming a faded canvas — by embroidering a portion of the plant, faithfully coloured, as seen under the microscope, onto its surface.

The introduction of the needle and thread into your practice marks a turning point, also in relation to the monumental dimension that characterised some of your previous textile installations. How does this technical choice correspond to a conceptual rethinking of your artistic language?

The use of the needle allows me to be more precise, surgical, deliberate in the choice of stitch/knot, colour, form, composition, volumes, etc.

As a result, the space to be occupied becomes smaller, because I have to deal with one portion at a time: in most of my recent works, I return to sitting at the microscope and meticulously investigating particles of organic matter. In fact, here I completely abandon the circle, opening up windows — rectangles of vision that reveal a part of the whole — whereas within the circle there is always the emergence of a global vision of the subject represented.

It is incredible how the needle allows me to engage with vastness and great distances like a cosmonaut, and at the same time to investigate the teeming and ancestral microcosm. Therefore, I do not define it as a turning point but rather as a continuation and expansion of my textile research where, depending on the project, I formulate that particular stitch, knot, shape, dimension, colour, volume, transparency, tools, and so forth, in order to best translate the image, the atmosphere, the feeling I wish to communicate.
I will continue to create large circular crocheted tapestries, also as a banner of resistance; to open microscopic windows; to punch holes in paper; to question the sky and the earth, and the humanity that cannot find its way home; to shape the textile, following my inner sensibility.

In an artistic context increasingly permeated by immersive technologies, artificial intelligence, and automated processes, how does your practice — founded instead on a material, slow, and deeply human approach — position itself? Has the rapid evolution of the technological landscape changed or challenged your approach?

A person observing a work of art is already completely immersed in a technology, in an artifice, in an artificial intelligence — or rather, in an intelligence “made art”, that becomes art. From prehistory to the present, new téchne have been developed to better express what one wishes to communicate, so the use of technology as an expressive medium is part of the development of art itself.

However, when the technology present in certain works overshadows the content and the artistic language turns into a purely technological language, art becomes incapable of communicating and conveying an emotion, placing distance between the work and the viewer, thus shortening the time of engagement and immersion—in short, it “cools” the relationship. Today, maintaining this balance is not easy.
I deeply appreciate the work of the artistic studio Fuse* which uses all emerging technologies, including AI, in collaboration with various universities around the world, creating immersive installations — not because of the size of the screens, but because of the emotional and sensorial content of their moving images.
Personally, automatism and speed do not allow me to dwell on things, to experience the time of making and the time of enjoying the form created — or being created. They distance me, alienate me, confuse me.
I continue to remain “analogue” because, simply, from the mistake I make while sewing a stitch, something new is born. Even better, when I don’t like what I’m creating, I overwrite the mistake, incorporating it into a new beauty that gives me depth, in every sense. At other times, I unpick, cut, and resize: the broken thread or scraps of fabric are important because they are evidence of the transformation I’m carrying out, and for which I’m taking time. The time needed for the idea to take shape.

I continue to long for the ongoing rethinking, the listening to emotion that translates into material form. I continue to long for slowness and discovery, to remain bound to the ritual, to the sacred, to the miracle of the genesis of form through my hands.

I do not want interference between what I feel and what I touch: I need to transfer everything “immediately”, even though the téchne I employ is a slow and deliberate practice, stitch by stitch, which nonetheless allows for a translation of thought into a concrete form that best adheres to who I am.

What ethical, political, or existential urgencies currently nourish your research? Which themes do you find most necessary to address through the language of art?

To build. In my view, art must not stop conveying this incredibly powerful message, using all possible, imaginable, and therefore realizable means. Violence — whatever form it takes, whether insidious or blatant — has won today. It is ever-present, an integral part of our days; it has comfortably settled into our daily lives, and we have made room for it: from the ongoing conflicts across the globe to the growing interpersonal conflicts with others (and even before that, with ourselves). We are broken, fragmented, reduced to rubble… for this reason, the word I feel most deeply in recent years is precisely “to build”.

Art has always denounced violence, but I fear it has fallen into the trap of normalization: the silence that once descended before a powerful work of denunciation — where dismay, reflection, and emotion would overwhelm the viewer — is now replaced by the snapshot captured on a mobile phone and quickly posted on social media, depriving the work and its narrative of the respect, the silence it once created, and the power of art to admonish humanity, evoking feelings of compassion, empathy, and closeness. Perhaps the image, like the word, is no longer enough… I am increasingly convinced that experiential art is an even more valid tool, today more than ever, and as an artist I would like to devote myself more and more to so-called “relational” art, in which interaction and even more active inclusion of the public, in my opinion, can make a difference.

From my very first workshops — open to the entire community regardless of gender, age, or sewing skills — designed to denounce violence, particularly against women, I have always reflected on the theme of building/rebuilding from that specific point of pain: scars are a new healed skin that preserves the pain experienced; upon that pain, a new shield has been built, and scars serve as reminders that such pain must never happen again. The thread becomes a metaphor more than ever of connection, of community, and of overcoming violence, together. It takes very little to build — sometimes, even a thread is enough.

Grazia Inserillo was born in Sicily in 1988, in Palermo, where she trained as a sculptor at the Academy of Fine Arts. She currently lives and works in Padua, where she teaches plastic-sculptural disciplines and dedicates herself to research in the field of contemporary art, with a particular focus on textile installations.
Originally from Isola delle Femmine, she grew up immersed among fishing nets and the embroidery traditions handed down by the women in her family: a material and symbolic heritage that profoundly shaped her imagination. Knots and interweaving form the root of her existence, and through thread, the artist explores the anthropological concepts of dwelling and existing.

She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Italy, Germany, France, and the United States, exhibiting in cities such as Palermo, Catania, Scicli, Milan, Turin, Genoa, Perugia, Vicenza, Tulle, Düsseldorf, and New York. Her solo exhibitions have taken place in Palermo (2016), Trapani (2017), Bagheria and New York (2020), Scicli and Vicenza (2023), and Milan (2025).

Inserillo has received several awards, including the FAM Prize – Young Sicilian Artists in 2016 and the BID Prize – International Women’s Biennial in 2017. Her textile works are part of the permanent collections of major institutions, such as the Palazzo Riso Museum of Contemporary Art in Palermo, the San Rocco Museum of Contemporary Art in Trapani, the Ecomuseum of Salemi, and the Polytechnic University of Valencia. One of her works, created with the participation of the community, is permanently housed at the anti-violence centre in the city of Turin.

Her work has been featured in the publications Peppi sperso per il mondo by Amelia Crisantino, with a critical text by Giusy Affronti; Trame d’artista by Marina Giordano; and Almanacco delle Artiste Siciliane – Volume 2 by Emilia Valenza, with a critical text by Marina Giordano. Other writers who have written about her include Giusi Diana, Giulia Giglio, Gianna Panicola, Barbara Pavan, Carla Ricevuto, Antonio Sarnari, Angela Stefani, and Emilia Valenza.