VENICE
LARA MORELL
We, at Kilometre Paris would like to present our muse:
Lara Morrell.
She was born in England, but she chose Venice as her real home. Ten years ago she arrived there for just a few
months. She ended up staying for good. The city pulled her right in with its rituals, its daily rhythm, and that slow
logic tied to the water. Now when she speaks Italian, her voice has this soft quality that reveals how much time she
has spent there. It does not show her original background at all. She lives on the island of Giudecca. That is where
her fiancé was born. The place still feels like a small village in many ways. Neighbors greet each other by name every
day. Boats sit moored right by the doors. Life there gets measured out by the tides coming and going.
If you spent a full twenty-four hours with her in Venice, she would guide you everywhere by boat. She would pick you
up at Crevan first. Then she would head straight toward Sant Erasmo. That island grows all the vegetables, with the
citys fields right there inside the sea somehow. You would go past long rows of artichokes, fennel, and zucchini. All of
them grow in soil soaked by salt. Lunch would happen at Al Baccan. It is a small trattoria where the air carries smells
of mint and iron. Everything on the menu comes from what the island provides that day. After that, you would keep
going to Torcello. You would visit the church and see its Byzantine mosaics up close. Then on to Burano as things
quiet down at dusk. The tourists would have left by then. The façades would glow like sugared shells in the light.
At night she would bring you to the Cinema Galleggiante. That is the floating cinema just behind Giudecca. Short
films play there on screens anchored out in the lagoon. It is magical, she says. You watch the art right from a boat.
The sky moves, the water shifts, the film rolls along. All of it comes together in motion. Later you would dock for
dinner at La Tana dei Turchi. The chefs there cook with real imagination. They reinvent Venetian food that often just
repeats the same old things. It makes for a perfect day, she says. The lagoon turns into a stage. Venice spreads out
as a constellation of islands that connect and think as one.
Lara studied art back in London at Saint Martins. Then she moved on to photography in Torino. She picked up Italian
there slowly, mostly by listening and ear. That came before she headed east to Venice. She has worked in different
roles over the years. Sometimes as an artist, other times as an editor or even a cultivator. She always stayed close to
art and the ground itself. That means images paired with soil in her world. For several years she edited My Art
Guides. It is an international platform focused on contemporary art. She interviewed artists and wrote pieces about
exhibitions. Being an artist herself helped a lot, she says. She knew how to approach them gently and with real
empathy
Later on she joined Osti e Orto. That is an association of Venetian restaurateurs. They share land on Sant Erasmo to
grow their own produce there. She worked the fields with her own hands during that time. It helped her rediscover
patience and a sense of purpose. When she needs to start over again, she says, she goes back to the earth for
grounding. Now she has stepped away from that work. She is returning to art full time. Her next chapter in life is
already starting to take shape.
If she had unlimited means and three full months of freedom, Lara would stay right in Venice. She would put money
into its future in smart ways. That means creating spaces for local artists who struggle to afford staying there.
Finding space is the hardest part, she explains. Venice overflows with art already. But it does not always serve the
people who actually live in the city. She would set up studios and galleries. Those places would let young artists work
without the heavy burden of rent. In that way, they could breathe freely and create without pressure.
She talks about Matteo Tamassia often. He is the boatbuilder she admires more than any other. His workshop in
Treviso is really small. It can only fit one boat at a time inside. He builds gondolas and all sorts of traditional
Venetian boats. But he also built hers personally. It mixes elements of a sampierotta and a cofina. She visited his
workshop many times. She went from the very first plank of wood all the way to the varo. That is the launching of
the finished boat into water. It felt like a birth in so many ways, she smiles. They even had a priest there, along with
friends and a full celebration. All of it was just for that boat entering the water.
She brings up a young couturier from Sant Erasmo too. That designer made her engagement hat with quiet elegance
and rare joy. She is one of the artists that Venice really should support, Lara says. The woman is talented, young, and
full of light in her work.
For Lara craftsmanship means necessity more than just nostalgia. It is what keeps a city truly alive, she says. Venice
got built by hands, not by machines at all. The only real way to honor it is to keep creating with touch and with care
every day.
Soon she will get married in Venice at the Church of the Redentore. She laughs when she remembers the wedding
she saw there just the week before. The women wore purple, almond, and yellow colors. Those shades shimmered like
fading frescoes in the light. It felt so Italian, she says. So full of life in every moment.
Laras Venice does not feel like a museum at all. It comes across as a living archipelago tied to art, labor, and
generosity. She moves through it like a bridge in a way. She connects the citys past makers with the new ones
coming up. All of it carries the same faith she found ten years ago. Beauty is something you have to keep working
for by hand.
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GIOELE & HEIBY ROMANELLI
We, at Kilometre Paris would like to present our muses :
Gioele and Heiby Romanelli.
They come from a place tied to Venice in deep ways. Folks at Kilometre Paris want to share these two as their inspirations.
They grew up in the lagoon area. The light there shifts between stone and water all the time. Venice feels like something
they inherited rather than just a spot to visit. It brings a sense of duty along with a lot of wonder. Gioele mentions that
every day he snaps a photo of the Accademia bridge. The light shifts every single minute. It is hard not to feel amazed by it.
Hospitality flows in their family like a steady undercurrent. It goes back five generations. Gioeles great grandmother
started the first family hotel. His grandfather was a photographer. He put portraits of guests all over the walls. In 1965 his
parents opened the Hotel Flora. It offered a quiet escape right behind the busy San Marco area. Later they added the
Novecento. That is a small guesthouse with nine rooms and some oriental touches. Hiby helped create it twenty years ago.
Then came Casa Flora. It started as a modern apartment from a workshop. Students from Parsons IUAV and Domus
Academy joined in. It feels part home and part test in how to live like a Venetian. Gioele says they asked those students to
picture the ideal spot for someone staying temporarily in Venice. Not just any visitor. Someone who fits right in like a
resident.
Every bit of Casa Flora fits that idea. They used handmade furniture and local crafts. The light flows through it like breath
during the day. It is a space that lives and changes with whoever stays there. One time it might house a collector. Another
it could be for a writer or even a family. Hiby calls it like a chameleon. It shapes itself to match the people who come
inside.
The two of them manage three spots now. There is Flora Novecento and Casa Flora. Each one looks different in design. Still
they all share one main idea. Hospitality comes across as a real feeling. To them a hotel is more like a story than just a
building. It creates a back and forth between guest and host. It links past and present too. They took that idea further with
Inside Venice. That is their online journal. It collects voices from locals artisans and stories that do not often get told.
Gioele points out there is way too much negative talk about Venice these days. They aim to highlight its real strength. That
means showing the people who pour everything into keeping the city going.
If you spent a full day with them in Venice they would start at the Rialto market. Go early in the morning before the crowds
build up. Fish shine like silver there. Herbs still carry dew from the night. Old men call out in the local dialect. Next they
would head to All Arco for some cicchetti and wine. Then cross the canal into Cannaregio. Walk past the old Jewish ghetto
and on to Castello. Find the hidden streets behind the Arsenale. That is where everyday Venetians still hang out. Tucked in
there is one of Gioeles top spots. Archivio Camera Photo holds a private collection. It keeps three hundred thousand
negatives from the 1940s up to the 1980s. He calls it a time machine. You see film shots of festivals carnivals even
elephants on bridges. Stars get off boats in those images too.
Come afternoon they would hop on a private boat. Head north through the lagoon. Stop at Murano for the soft light at
Berengo Foundation. Have dinner at Da Primo after that. It is a family run trattoria. They still bake buranelli biscuits by
hand there. Then over to Torcello. Stand under those Byzantine mosaics that glow with ages of history. Or try Sant Erasmo
instead. Chefs and farmers team up there to grow veggies for the whole city. Gioele says Venice goes beyond just buildings.
It works like an ecosystem. The land the people and even the air all connect in ways that matter.
Gioele thinks about what he would do with three months free. His plan stays straightforward. He would stick to Italy but
skip the popular paths. Travel through lesser known spots like Abruzzo Molise Basilicata and Marche. Those areas let you
feel the true rhythm of life. Stories stay alive in places like that.
Craftsmanship means a lot to him no matter if it is in a hotel a table or a meal. It links people to something lasting. He
believes craft holds more importance now than before. It keeps connections strong. Every piece of work needs a person
behind it. That could be a mind a hand or real effort. That is what adds real flavor to things. He just read Salvatore
Ferragamos autobiography. It taught him a key point. The future comes from stepping back a bit. Remember the old ways
of making stuff.
Gioele and Heiby see Venice teaching these lessons every day. Living there means dealing with fragility and sticking it out.
You balance right on the line between beauty and what might fade away. Gioele smiles and says you have to stay amazed.
The day he finds someone who is not that person could never be his friend.
Their version of Venice skips the postcard views. It focuses on the real living city. Water hands and a steady belief shape it.
Wonder can turn into a tradition if you look after it.
Carmela Cipriani
We, at Kilometre Paris would like to present our muse:
Carmela Cipriani.
She was born in Venice. In that city, it means she was born on water. When you open your eyes there, you see light that
is already broken. It gets multiplied and liquefied in strange ways. For Carmela, beauty did not come as some big
discovery. It came as an inheritance instead. She says, I opened my eyes. Beauty flooded in right away. The canals
served as her first mirrors. The campanili acted like her compass. In Venice, you learn to float before you ever learn to
run. You balance before you worry about distance. Water comes before earth in everything. Survival starts not with
breath there. It starts with buoyancy pretty much.
Venice, she says, is not built of stone at all. It is built of echoes really. Footsteps echo on wet bridges. Bells dissolve into
fog slowly. Oars make a slow gasp against green water. The city does not stand firm. It murmurs in a quiet way. It is a
city of voices. Not noise exactly. You can recognize a friend by their voice across a campo. Even smell turns into melody
here. You can guess what your neighbor is cooking. It might be ragù or baccalà nero. The city exhales its kitchens
through the canals. Every sense stays awake all the time.
Carmela speaks of Venice like it is flesh. It feels round and porous. It breathes in and out. The bridges work as its ribs.
The campaniles serve as its nerves. The lagoon acts as its slow, tidal heart. She says, Venice is a fish. It is a fish that
folds you in its body. It never lets you go. Seen from above, it curves like two fish kissing. She takes you first to San
Giorgio’s campanile. It is quiet and unvisited mostly. From there, you see all the islands breathe. The wind smells of salt
and iron. Gulls hover like angels in the air. Then she leads you to Malamocco. That is the first Venice. It stays wild still.
There, the sky becomes a room. It is il cielo in una stanza. Families build small wooden huts on the Murazzi. Those are
picnic shelters facing both the sea and the old city. She calls it eating in the sky.
Her Venice is not the postcard version. It is a city stitched from shadows. There are sottoporte and courtyards that
breathe salt. Docks sit half-sunk in memory. She takes you there by boat always. It is to San Pietro di Castello. The first
basilica still clings to the edge of the lagoon. Stone dissolves into tide there. It is the place of her childhood walks with
her grandmother. Laundry still stretches from window to window. It acts like flags of ordinary life. They tremble above
the water.
She grew up beneath Peggy Guggenheim’s window. That is the myth of Dorsoduro. Carmela tells it like a fable. It gets
whispered on foggy mornings. There is Peggy and her unfinished nose. The surgery stopped mid-cut. The cartilage
blushed with the weather. She wore sunglasses like armor. That woman turned imperfection into legend. Her life felt
half-real and half-dream. It was like Venice itself. The woman lived surrounded by twelve Pekingese dogs. Each one was
named like a confection. A woman murdered in her garden beside them. Venice is full of such beauty and strangeness,
she says. They are one and the same thing.
Carmela calls herself Venetian before anything else. She is a writer and photographer. She is a chronicler too. But above
all, she is a witness to the city’s slow metamorphosis. She has written about Venice not as a monument. It is as a
heartbeat instead. She calls it the Venice of the heart. It is seen with a child’s eyes. Every wall hides a story there. Every
pigeon acts as a friend. Every canal serves as a secret mirror. She has written tales for children. They are like modern
Calvino fables. In them, everything still arrives by water. It carries treasure from far away.
Ask her why craft matters. Her voice softens then. Because it is intimate, she says. It is an interior world translated into
matter. True craftsmanship, for her, is the soul made visible through the hand. It lives in the gesture and the repetition.
It is the private pulse of creation. She tells stories of Venetian artisans. They worked leather or hair or wood as though it
were silk. There is Segalin, who made shoes shaped like gondolas. They were for Luigino Rossi. No one else could ever
replicate those shoes. The craftsman, she says, is always an artist. Not by title exactly. But by need.
Venice has given her the same need. It is to make and to transmit. It is to keep alive what water constantly threatens to
erase. She believes in what endures. That is touch and sound and memory.
Carmela Cipriani is not nostalgic. She is faithful instead. Faithful to a city that still astonishes her every day. She says,
Venice offers you forevers. No other place does that. Whatever you live here, even a photograph on a bridge, stays with
you.
Venice teaches you wonder. She, in turn, teaches you to see it.
GLORIA ROGLIANO
We, at Kilometre Paris would like to present our muse:
Gloria Rogliano.
She has lived her whole life around water. It was not something passed down from family. It came as a natural pull. One
day when she was twenty-three, she got into a boat. It seemed like she had been rowing her entire life. The motion was
already there in her body. It felt like an old memory coming back. It was instinct at first, she says. Then it turned into
determination. After that came training. And finally the pleasure of connecting with others.
She did not grow up on the lagoon. Her family came from Venice. They had no boats. They stayed close to the land. Not
the changing tides. Still the water drew her in. She moved from Sant Erasmo to Burano. From Pellestrina to the tight
canals in the city. She picked up the feel of the oar. That is the voga alla veneta style. It is an old way of standing and
stroking. The boat moves ahead through steady effort. Not by rushing. She turned into one of Venice's top rowers. But
being strong was not her main aim. It went beyond just winning, she says. It meant getting the place itself. The light
there. The birds. The mudflats called barene. She wanted to know exactly where she stood. And where she hoped to
remain.
Spend a day with her. She would start by taking you out in a boat. It is always by boat with her. You would go through
canals. Palaces line them. They seem to open up toward the water like ancient openings. Then out into the lagoon. The
air carries salt and soil smells still. She would point out Burano. That is where the Stringheta family used to carry popes
across. Think John XXIII. Wojtyla. Ratzinger. She would head to Pellestrina next. There her friends eat right on their
boats. They use their hands. Quietly. Peeling shrimp. Sharing laughs. She would bring you to meet the campionesse.
Those are the women who raced long ago. Bare arms. Sharp looks. And the older rowers too. Men and women in their
eighties or nineties. They still have plenty of vigor. Ready to share tales. That is the true Venice, she says. Not the version
from guidebooks. But the living one.
Glorias life centers on the hand. Its work. Its elegance. Its giving nature. When she looks in the mirror, she says, those
are the hands she notices. They are not pretty in some perfect way. But they belong to her. Veins show. They are solid.
Gentle. Marked by scars. They have labored all her days. She values them for what they hold. Strength. Steadiness.
Warmth. This year she plans to give them a break. And some honoring. It is for the Historical Regatta in September
2026. She will row once more. At age sixty-two. With a young woman who is nineteen. Two generations side by side, she
smiles. Two styles of rowing. Two forms of power. I pass on what I have learned. She brings fresh drive. It shows women
can push on. No matter their years.
If someone asked what she would do with endless resources. She answers right away. My top idea, she says, is Barca e
Casa. That means Boat is Home. It helps the older folks and those with disabilities in Venice. They grew up by the water.
But now they miss the sense of gliding over it. She would guide them on trips. Because they long to view the sea once
more. To feel alive again. After that she would set up a school. A basic kind. Like the one I knew, she says. No computers.
No phones. Nothing showy or forced. I want embraces. Smiles. Hard work. Giving up comforts. A place to learn real
living. Where we teach each other. I take from the young ones. They take from me.
To her Venice needs to reclaim its role as a hub of culture. Not sealed off and all about money. But welcoming. And
centered on people. We speak of bringing everyone in, she says. Yet we do not truly do it. Fine words sound good. But
turning them into action means real effort.
She has embodied that idea of sacrifice. And with real happiness. As a rower. As head of Le Regattanti. She pushed past
limits in a field men once controlled. She rowed to highlight endurance. Not raw power. To keep traditions going through
women. I joined to face the skepticism, she says. To prove a woman handles it all. I met the men head on. I chose to.
They stood as my peers.
These days as the lagoon shifts around her. Gloria keeps rowing on. Not only over the waves. But across the years too.
Her hands grip the oar. And hold onto recollections. Her visions of boats. Of schools. Of stirring lives back up. They all
pass things forward. Venice holds real strength still, she says. We need to keep it that way. By holding onto our core
values.
In her words the citys heartbeat comes alive again. Generosity. Steady beat. Bravery. And the constant gleam from the
water.
SAVERIO PASTOR
We, at Kilometre Paris would like to present our muse:
Saverio Pastor.
He began at sixteen and a half, already too old, his master said. In Venice, one was meant to start younger, when the
body still obeyed and the hands hadn’t yet learned impatience. So he watched. For two months he did nothing else,
watched, eight hours a day, the ritual of sawdust and silence, the rhythm of hands carving the city’s bones. Then, one
day, he was allowed to touch the wood. That was nearly fifty years ago, and he has never stopped.
Saverio was born in Venice and never left. His world is measured in grains of wood, in gestures repeated for centuries, in
the sound of oars, remi, cutting through the lagoon. He crafts those oars, long, lean extensions of the arm, and the
forcole that cradle them, wooden sculptures of motion and restraint. They aren’t props; they’re vertebrae in the body of
the lagoon. Each curve speaks its own dialect: one whispers of turning, another commands the boat to slow, another
bites against the current and throws it backward, another releases it, smooth as breath. The shapes look sensual,
accidental even, but they’re maps of muscle, of habit, of centuries of trial and tide. Touch one, and you feel it, the
choreography of a city written in wood, every line a pulse, every hollow a pause before the next stroke. “There is nothing
casual in the shape,” he says. “Every line answers to function.” In his hands, the forcola is not an object; it’s
choreography frozen in wood, a curve of woman, a whisper of Ferrari, elegance made useful.
He works in a city that floats between decay and devotion. Only four or five artisans remain like him, men who still
shape wood the way their fathers did, and their fathers before them. Venice once had hundreds. Now it has traffic. Too
many engines, too many wakes, waves that batter the canals and bruise the wood. “If I had infinite means and three
months,” he says, “I’d bring the engineers, the students, anyone who can make the lagoon quiet again.” He imagines a
Venice reborn through silence: wooden boats again, rational movement, new engines without noise, designed by the
young, built by the skilled.
Saverio’s hands are his memory. “Manual work,” he says, “is what defines humanity.” To him, touch is intelligence, a
way of knowing what others overlook. Each decision, curve, grain, polish, is a negotiation between instinct and matter.
The wood teaches, if you let it.
If you had 24 hours in Venice, he’d put you on the water. Not in a vaporetto, not even in a gondola, but a small boat, the
kind that listens to the tide. You’d leave from the Arsenale, pass San Marco, drift into the narrow veins near Rialto.
“That’s where Venice shows itself,” he says. “From the water. From below.”
His workshop smells of cherry and maple, of varnish and time. On one wall hang ferri da prua, the iron prows of
gondolas, gleaming like relics. On another, models of smaller boats, each with its own anatomy. He never built a
gondola himself, tradition forbids it. Venice’s old guilds were strict: the oar-makers made oars, the hull-builders built
hulls. But Saverio knows a gondola’s beauty the moment he sees its line. It’s the same line he’s spent his life tracing in
wood, the curve that holds the city together.
A forcola takes time, patience, precision, listening. It should cost thirty thousand euros, he says, laughing, but it sells for
fifteen hundred. It will last thirty years. Longer than the man who carved it, perhaps.
He has worked the same way for nearly half a century: morning to night, by hand, in the same city that taught him to
look at the world through reflection. In Venice, even survival is craft. Saverio Pastor doesn’t fight the water; he works
with it. Every stroke of his chisel is a prayer to keep the city afloat a little longer, not through grandeur, but through
care.
SERVANE GIOL
We, at Kilometre Paris would like to present our muse:
Servane Giol.
She speaks of Venice the way some speak of a lover, with ache, with loyalty, with a kind of warning folded inside
devotion. For her, the city breathes. It isn’t scenery; it’s sinew, an organism stitched together by the head and the
hand, the mind that imagines, the hand that obeys. When one forgets the other, the pulse falters. Venice holds its
breath.
She tells it like a witness haunted by what she’s seen. Once, she says, there was a Biennale, not of art as we know it,
but of the decorative, the intimate, the human. A chorus of architects, glassblowers, lace-makers, dreamers, all
speaking the same language. Then 1972 arrived like a door slamming shut. Fashion changed. Bureaucrats decided.
And overnight, the dialogue died. A bureaucratic decision, a shift in fashion, and suddenly Murano and Burano
entered a long sleep. The glass still glowed, but no one asked it to change. The lace still shimmered, but no one wore
it. “The masters continued,” she says, “but without a thinking head, without someone to say, let’s experiment.”
She names the ones who once spoke that shared language: Scarpa, Venini, the artists who built bridges between
intellect and gesture. Without them, the dialogue broke. Burano’s lace fell into near extinction. Five lace makers
remain, perhaps fewer. To make a butterfly takes six hundred hours, time the modern world no longer pays for.
And yet, Venice always returns. “It’s cyclical,” Servane says. “1920, everyone arrives. 1940, everyone leaves. 1950, they
come back.” Now, again, the wave rises. Since the pandemic, the world has turned toward Venice with a feverish
hunger, for beauty, for calm, for art that breathes. The city, suspended between sea and mountain, has become
sanctuary. “The new Venetians,” she calls them, the collectors, the restorers, the dreamers rebuilding palazzos and
reviving the old duet between mind and hand. She names Shahane Minassian among them, and her eyes brighten.
“The glass I’ve seen lately,” she says, “is exceptional.”
Ask her what she would do with a limitless budget and three months of freedom, and she laughs, gently, almost
shyly. “Freedom,” she says, “is the true luxury.” Money doesn’t tempt her; time does. She would not run toward the
world, she already lives inside it. “Here, in Venice, Marco Polo never left. He brought everything home. The spices, the
fabrics, the imagination, they’re still in the walls.”
Her dream is quieter: a rock above the sea, alone but not lonely. A wild promontory in Tuscany, near Porto Ercole.
There, she would live among her books, the paper ones, the real ones, heavy in her suitcase. She would read until the
pages blurred into silence. No tourists, no crowds, only solitude and salt air.
Still, she circles back, to Venice, to her book Soul of Venice. Thirty experiences, she says, no more, no less. Thirty
gestures of discovery. Buying friulane slippers, tasting cicchetti from the woman who won the prize, climbing a
campanile to see the lagoon like a secret revealed. “In one day,” she smiles, “you might do twelve. But it would cost
you the islands.”
Her advice is simple: stay. Walk. Look. Drink water from a Venetian glass, invented here. Put on your glasses,
Venetian, again. Look at yourself in a mirror, another Venetian gift. “Every morning,” she says, “you make three
gestures born in Venice. You just don’t realize it.”
Servane Giol reminds us to. She restores the bridge between intellect and touch, between creation and
remembrance. She doesn’t move fast. She listens. She teaches us that the handmade is not nostalgia, it’s continuity.
That freedom is not flight, it’s silence earned.
Mara Sartore
We, at Kilometre Paris would like to present our muse:
Mara Sartore.
She talks about Venice in a special way. It is like describing a body you know inside out. Not perfect. But alive. Pulsing with veins of light. And centuries of hands. Craftsmanship, she says, is an act of creation that differs from art. Art is conceptual. Imagined. A thought made visible. Craft is the act of doing. Of shaping. Of touching. It is the knowledge of hands that remember. Sometimes, she admits, the line between the two all but disappears. Where the artisan becomes artist. And the artist returns to the hand. That threshold, she says, is the place she loves most. The border where imagination and manuality meet.
Mara was born in London. By chance, she says. Her father was teaching there. Her mother too. But Venice is what made her. The city she calls home. Where she dreamed. Worked. And began everything. A city of reflections. Where water mirrors time. And every bridge carries an echo of the past. I have dreamed a lot about Venice, she confides. My link to this place goes beyond the present. It lives in the past. And reaches into the future.
She is, by her own words, passionate. A woman who follows her dreams. Who lives each day as if it were the last. Her life feels like several lived at once. A film festival. A communications agency. A guide. A bar. A life like Venice itself. Layered. Restless. Made of crossings.
For ten years, she directed a short film festival called Circuito Off. It was held during the Venice Film Festival. A celebration of brevity and brilliance. Then came Lightbox. Her communications company devoted to contemporary art projects. Through it, she created My Art Guides. A constellation of guides to the worlds major art scenes. Venice Biennale. Art Basel. Fairs in Brazil. Hong Kong. Shanghai. And beyond. Paper guides and digital ones. Soon gathered into a single global app. Open it anywhere. And you will find, around you, the worlds most intriguing contemporary spaces. Restaurants. And hotels. Curated by an international committee of eyes and minds.
Then, Tuscany called. Through friends. Through wine. Together they began producing natural wines. From that harvest came Vino Vero. A bar that has since become a Venetian landmark. Small. Warm. And alive. It holds over two thousand labels within its walls. Two thousand stories in bottles. Gathered in Cannaregio. One of the last truly lived-in quarters of Venice. Where Venetians still shop. Where children still go to school. Where the Jewish Ghetto breathes its layered quiet. Vino Vero is not just a bar. But a point of encounter. A place where travelers drink like locals. And locals dream like travelers.
A hundred meters away stands her second creation. Bea Vita. Life is beautiful. Once a school. Now reborn as a living space with music. Vinyls. Artists. Simple food drawn from Venetian history. And wine selected by the same loving hand. Tonight, she says, an Iranian artist plays there. Tomorrow, perhaps someone else.
In the window of Vino Vero, there is art. It began in 2021. When Mara decided that their wine clubs empty vitrine should show something more. She called it Vitrine. An exhibition visible to all. Public by essence. For over twenty years, she invited artists working with nature. In dialogue with the land and vines that fill her glasses. Then, in January 2024, a new cycle began. One devoted entirely to women. Female artists. Activists. Voices that reinterpret the world with tenderness and strength.
Mara Sartore moves between worlds. Art and wine. Venice and the world. Thought and touch. She builds bridges between taste and vision. Between what can be poured and what can be seen. Like the artisans she reveres, she works with her hands. But also with memory. Each project. Each glass. Each exhibition a gesture of continuity. Of preservation. Of faith in the handmade and the human.
Venice, to her, is not nostalgia. It is a living workshop. And she is its quiet, tireless dreamer.
ANTONIA SAUTTER
We, at Kilometre Paris would like to present our muse:
Antonia Sautter.
She was not born into costume, she willed herself into it. One day, thirty-three years ago, in a small shop where she
sold corsets and accessories, a man from Monty Python walked in. Terry Jones. He asked to speak about Venice. She
spoke, about the city, about imagination, and he offered her work on a BBC film set in Byzantium. She had no
experience. No training. Only nerve. That night she didn’t sleep. The next morning she returned and said, “Trust me.
I’ll do it all.” And she did. Gondolas became ships bound for Constantinople, palaces turned into sets, friends into
artisans. It was madness, and a beginning.
Antonia says the secret of her life was hidden in that moment: that you must recognize when folly is destiny, when
chance asks to be seized. Everything since, the ateliers, the ballets, the Venetian balls, began there, in that single
act of faith.
Today she orchestrates an entire world of hands. Five couturières work with her year-round, twenty-five when
Carnival swells. In her atelier, fabric rises like breath, sequins fall like light. “The hand,” she says, “translates the
heart.” In a century obsessed with speed and screens, she defends the slow pulse of making. To create by hand is, for
her, a form of meditation, a recovery of time, of essence, of presence. The thread becomes a line of thought; the
gesture, a kind of prayer.
If you visit her during the preparations for the Ball of the Doge, you will see chaos made holy, feathers, velvet, gold,
laughter, exhaustion. It is not work; it is alchemy. “To project the future,” she says, “you must first know the past.”
Every stitch carries centuries of Venetian memory, every mask an echo of the lagoon’s carnival ghosts.
Her dream, if money were no object, is to build a vast laboratory of beauty, a place where young artisans could learn
from old masters, where retired craftsmen could pass on their art before it disappears. “Not a school,” she insists, “a
space of transmission.” A hub where the city’s creative pulse could be felt again. Venice, she says, needs youth, and
youth need wonder.
Antonia herself is born of that same marriage of opposites: her mother Venetian, her father German, he came to
Venice once and never left. “Venice provokes love,” she says, half-smiling, as if confessing a spell. “It traps you with
beauty.” She still returns to Pellestrina, that sliver of land where her grandmother, another Antonia, first breathed
salt air. There, the lagoon and the sea stare each other down like twin mirrors; nets dry in the wind like hymns; the
horizon folds so low it feels you could touch it. “That’s where I come from,” she says, from the line where water
meets water, and everything begins to shimmer.
In her world, nothing is ordinary. A fabric becomes a wing, a gondola becomes a ship, fatigue turns into euphoria.
She believes creation itself is a form of medicine, that when people share a project, a passion, “everything becomes
strength.”
Antonia Sautter is costume designer, dream-builder, keeper of Venetian enchantment. She works not for nostalgia
but for continuity. In a world losing touch, she reminds us that the hand still remembers, and that beauty, when
made by hand, is a way to stay alive.
MARTA TULLIO
We, at Kilometre Paris would like to present our muse:
Marta Tullio.
She talks in a soft voice. It is like she has learned to hear the quiet all around her. That is the kind of silence in
Venice. It hums with light and salt and old memories. Thirty years back, she came to Venice because of love. She
stayed there for the same reason. The love was so complete that it pulled her right into the city. She became part of
its water and marble and that touch of sadness. She wed a jeweler. His shop faces out onto Piazza San Marco. After
that, her days fell into a pattern of light and reflections and fine handwork.
Stones came before paper in her life. Marta trained as a gemmologist. She knew how to spot perfection in the tiniest
shine. That meant clarity and cut and color and carat. Precision shaped everything she did. Then one day, paper
showed up by accident. Her husband wanted her to create something for the shop windows. He suggested flowers.
She had never tried making one before. She laughed at the idea. She gave it a go. She could not quit after that.
What started as simple interest turned into real passion.
These days, she folds and cuts and layers and shapes the paper. Her hands used to measure diamonds with care.
Now they draw out petals from plain card stock. She makes peonies most of the time. They are her own vision, not
exact copies. I do not want to imitate nature, she says. I want to interpret it. Her flowers never wilt or lose their color.
They capture the calm of deep thought. Each fold feels like a breath. Each curve acts like a prayer. Cutting paper is a
kind of silence, she says.
She creates by herself. Her table sits near the window. The city around her feels like it is built from paper. It is fragile
and glowing and very old. Things changed during the lockdown. Venice cleared out completely. She and her husband
walked across Piazza San Marco to look at the shop. The square stood empty. It was just the two of them with the
basilica and the bell tower and the grand palaces. An indescribable emotion came over her, she recalls. The gap
between them and the city turned sacred. It was like finding again something you thought you already understood.
Beauty is everywhere, she says. You only need different eyes to see it.
Six years have gone by since that first flower. Her work has gone places she has not. It reached the Saatchi Gallery in
London. There, Flowers spread out four meters across. It looked crimson and full of life. The pieces went to Buccellati
and Dior and Bottega Veneta. For Buccellati, she crafted one hundred seventy blossoms. They were huge and red. A
magnificent madness, she calls it. Still, it brought her a sense of freedom. They trusted my taste completely, she
says. That is my greatest satisfaction.
If someone handed her a card with no rules and three months free, she would not hurry away. She would stick close
by. Maybe in the French countryside. Maybe right here in Venice. She would care for a garden and read books and
make more flowers. Time is the only true luxury, she says. Three months just for herself would be her dream. Not for
work or obligations.
Marta's art goes beyond simple decoration. It focuses on real attention. To the paper itself. To the movements of her
hands. To the air around it. Every petal she shapes carries the quiet heartbeat of Venice. She never left the city. It
kept showing her new sides. She does not need to lead you through it. Venice must be walked, she smiles. You get
lost. In losing yourself, you find it.
She puts faith in hands. In what they hold onto from the past. Through her own hands, paper turns alive. It becomes
a scene of patience. It forms a picture of love.
NADJA ROMAIN
We at Kilometre Paris want to introduce our muse:
Nadja Romain.
She talks about art in a way that reminds you of how people describe travel. It involves departure, arrival, and all the
parts that come between those moments. "Art," she says, "is the most beautiful journey." Craftsmanship fits right
in there too. It is the hand that creates things, the spirit that dreams them up, and the mystery that links the two
together. In a world that seems to disappear more and more into screens and data, Nadja holds onto what fights
against that fading away. She values the touch, the body, and the gesture that takes an idea and makes it real in the
world.
She makes her home in Venice these days. Glass there seems to breathe just like the water around it. She spends
time working alongside master glassmakers. These are men and women who have devoted decades to controlling
fire, forming sand, and capturing light in their craft. She observes how artists and artisans come together in that
space. One side offers vision, while the other provides the skilled hand. "It is a dance," she says, "sometimes
harmonious, sometimes not so much. The key is finding some kind of balance." You could send over a drawing and
get back something lovely. But real dialogue changes everything. It leads to something truly magic. Nadja puts her
faith in that magic. She thinks we need to feel things before we can even start to understand them.
For her, feeling has turned into a whole way of living. Or you could say it is a deliberate choice about what matters
most. She surrounds herself with meaning instead of just piling up abundance. She picks objects that hold time
within them. They carry stories from a place, a person, or a particular craft. She turns away from the endless loop of
replacing everything all the time. Beauty does not have to be brand new to count. What really counts is presence,
the way something stays with you. "Life," she says, "is an experience. And the handmade keeps us right in the
middle of it."
If you spent a full twenty-four hours with her in Venice, she would skip the usual spots like the Rialto or San Marco.
She would head out to the lagoon instead. Think Sant Erasmo, where farmers still manage to grow vegetables in that
salty soil. Or Torcello, the very first island people settled on. Then Burano, with its painted houses tied to the old
fishing ways. She would guide you to the Giudecca next. There you find the church of Redentore, and behind its stone
walls a garden that has come back to life. After that, Dorsoduro calls. It is her neighborhood, her studio, her daily
rhythm. The Guggenheim fits in naturally. She calls it her temple. "You can feel Peggy's soul there," she says. Wrap it
up with a glass of wine at Experimental. Grab some cicchetti at Schiavon. End at La Gaudemie. That is a tableware
studio brought back for a fresh generation, where glass takes on a pop vibe.
She names her space L eau Studio. Water inspires the title, since Venice flows through everything she touches. It is
not exactly a gallery in the traditional sense. She does show work there, and she sells objects too. But what she
creates is more like a spot for real encounters. Artists drop by to try out experiments, test new materials, or even use
her walls for display. She hopes the studio stays open and keeps expanding. It should host all kinds of people and
events. "It is not about exclusivity," she says. "I do not own artists. I collaborate with them. I connect them to others
who can help along the way."
Venice came after London in her story. London followed Paris, where she was born. The city raised her through its
streets and cinemas. Its culture nourished her, but she always felt restless for places beyond. By seventeen, she
worked in Claude Berri's gallery. She found herself around pieces she did not fully grasp yet, but she loved them
anyway. Think Boltanski, Bourgeois, and the spark of curiosity that started there. Journalism came next. She wrote
for Vogue Déco, Maison & Jardin, and Glamour. Then she moved into film production. She produced Mister Lonely, the
Harmony Korine film. That director matched her own unconventional road. For Nadja, cinema counts as
craftsmanship too. It is a handmade art built on light, editing, and raw emotion. "Everything should be made by
hand," she says. That includes film.
Venice did not enter her plans from the start. She arrived for a specific project. It involved an exhibition with Murano
glassmakers. She ended up staying. "It is the most international village in the world," she laughs. In that village, she
has discovered her own reflection. The city mixes fragility with resilience, craft with illusion, and hands that still
shape the world around them.
Nadja Romain goes beyond being just a curator, producer, or writer. She acts as a connector. She links spirit to
substance, artist to artisan, water to glass. She holds the belief that making things means feeling them deeply. And
feeling leads straight to living fully. In a world that races toward the immaterial, she stands quietly. She surrounds
herself with what the hand remembers.
Elena, Massimo & Margherita MICHELUZZI
We, at Kilometre Paris would like to present our muse:
Massimo Micheluzzi.
He has spent more than thirty years working with glass. He does not just shape it. He understands it deeply. It seems
like a living material to him. It remembers heat and breath in some way. His gallery in Venice serves as both a
workshop and a family home. The front room fills with light and color. The back area lines with tools, fragments, and
furnaces. That is where his daughters grew up. They were surrounded by glass dust and the sounds of hands at work.
Before he turned to glass, Massimo worked with wood. He started out as a restorer. He trained in the quiet patience
needed to touch old things. He brought surfaces back to life carefully. He handled antiques. He built and repaired
everything possible. His daughter Elena calls him the most manual person in the world. When he discovered glass, it
felt like a natural next step. It moved from solid to liquid forms. It shifted from matter to light in his hands.
He learned the craft in Murano. He was among masters and friends of the Venini family. He began as a
photographer there. He documented the Venini archive. He framed transparency through a lens before he ever
touched the material. Then the apprenticeship started. Experiments followed. He created his first own forms. By the
1990s, his work had developed its own voice.
The pieces were organic and fluid. They were recognizably his style.
Today, Massimo's glass pieces fall into two main families. The first one is transparent. It includes color, but never in a
forced way. The shapes flow naturally. They come from the glass's own rhythm. They are not imposed on it. The
surfaces feel soft. They are slightly opaque. Elena calls this the flower effect. It is a delicate bloom that marks his
signature style. You recognize it by its texture. Light seems to breathe through it. It does not just reflect sharply.
The second family involves mosaic work. It draws inspiration from architecture. It reflects the floors of Venetian
palaces. It echoes marble and stone patterns. These pieces feel more structured. They are earth-bound in nature.
Their geometry provides a counterpoint to the fluid works. They mirror the city's ground level. The others capture its
water. Together, they create the full topography of Venice. It includes solid and liquid elements. It blends earth and
lagoon.
Behind every piece stands the same philosophy. Elena inherited it without even realizing. She says if you know you
can make something with your hands, you think differently. You learn through repetition and mistakes. It goes
beyond just a technique. It becomes a way of living. For Massimo, making is a dialogue between thought and touch.
The mind imagines forms. The hand corrects them. The glass itself teaches lessons along the way.
When someone asks what the family would do with unlimited means, Elena answers right away. She would invest in
Murano. Our shop is here, she explains. But production happens in Murano. Glass making costs a lot. There is gas,
logistics, and the material itself. Everything gets done by hand. We have to be careful with resources. If we could be
freer, we would create more pieces. Murano feels fragile to her. It is a world of aging masters and empty furnaces. If
they stop working, we stop too. Everything we do depends on them.
The Micheluzzi workshop means more than a family business. It acts as a conversation between generations. It
involves Massimo, his daughters, his mentors, and the island of Murano itself. In a time when industry replaces
intimacy, their glass still shows fingerprints. It carries breath marks. It holds the soft trace of human error.
To step inside their gallery feels like seeing Venice as it was built to be seen. You view it from the water, through
reflection. Massimo's work reminds us of something important. True transparency is never pure. It holds opacity and
history. It keeps the faint warmth of a hand that shaped it.
FRANCE THIERARD
We, at Kilometre Paris would like to present our muse:
France Thierard.
She showed up in Venice kind of late. She was thirty-nine then. A friend brought her there. It was not a lover.
That just goes to show how certain cities pick you out. You do not always choose them. Her very first trip was
set up as a birthday surprise. It was meant to distract her a bit. Things turned out different though. It became
this huge eye-opener. The city spread out like some page in a book she had skipped over. Think of its quiet
spots. Its soft glow. Its past that felt so full of life it almost vibrated. She came back over and over. Eventually
Venice turned into her real home.
Paris came before all that. There was the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier. And the Comédie-Française too. She
spent thirteen years there soaking up lights and words. She even wrote a book called Cher Comédie Française. It
was all about the group she cared about so much. As an art historian she dug into history. She produced shows.
She handled stage work and writing. Then something shifted. Water appeared. Reflections too. She started
feeling like life could shift gears. Maybe live more through touch than just thoughts.
Things changed in Venice. She wrote this book Venise comme je l’aime. It comes across like a personal
admission mixed with a guide. Part of it feels like a love note. The rest helps you figure out how to get lost on
purpose. Her friend Aurore de la Morinerie did the illustrations. The story tracks four different women through
the streets. There is the Dreamer. The Adventurer. The Scholar. And the Elegant one. They all roam around the
place. She puts it this way. It is like having a friend grab your hand and lead you. That book marked her entry
point. It let her step into a whole new phase of living.
She ended up buying a little boat. She calls it sa barque. That let her start poking around the lagoon from the
water. You cannot really get Venice until you slip into it by boat. That is what she says. The building fronts look
totally different up close from the canals. Palaces seem to open up like they are talking. Their entrances get
framed by these carved old man heads. They stand as ancient guards between solid ground and the flowing
water. She really likes the way things reflect. Light plays on the surface almost like ideas bouncing around.
Venice means water to her. It is always about the water.
Her place is tucked right between Palazzo Grassi and Palazzo Malipiero. It sits along the Grand Canal. Glass
makes it feel so bright inside. The windows look out to trees on one side. Tide on the other. That is a special
thing in a spot like this. Light falls just right on what she makes. There are these delicate bottles with patterns.
Candleholders too. Vases that are not see-through. They come in shades like pea green which is piselli. And blue
called pervinca. Her sets get named after colors or feelings. One is Au fil de l’eau. That means Along the Water.
It ties back to her book. And her whole way of being.
She describes herself as a gémologue these days. Or a jeweler. A writer too. And now a glass artist. Once she
left the Comédie-Française behind she started making jewelry in Paris. She teamed up with Armenian jewelers
over in Istanbul. Then with Italian craftspeople who handle stones so carefully it is like surgery. One necklace of
hers grabbed attention from an Elle reporter. Come September they gave her half a page. All about her pieces.
That is when she saw it. Her next chapter had kicked off.
Her hands kept drawing her in deeper though. About six years back during the Covid time a friend
mentioned something. The artist Maria Grazia Rosin. She talked about how quiet Murano had gotten.
Furnaces sitting cold. Master workers with nothing to do. Glass folks out of jobs. France checked it out
herself. She found a workshop full of six thousand glasses no one bought. The fires cost too much to
start up again. They had produced so much. But made no money from it. That is what she recalls. She
wrote to her circle of friends. Mostly women. She offered to move those glasses at low prices. Thirty-five
euros each for items worth a hundred. In just a month everything sold out. Six thousand items. Six
thousand small ways to help. The furnaces fired up once more.
She stuck around after that. She joined the masters at work. These guys in their seventies still handled
air and flame like young folks. She teared up watching Salvadore. He was seventy-seven. He shaped a
lamp base with stripes so exact it seemed impossible. That got to her. She says it moved her deeply. This
craft nearly disappeared. Still it hangs on.
These days she comes up with her own lines. Lamps. Vases. Everyday glass things. She mixes old
methods from centuries ago with her feel for colors. Opaque shades appeal to her most. The soft matte
ones that trap light inside. Her debut set came from that bond of friendship and heat. People copied it
all over the place. She just smiles about it. Copying means it hit home. Her follow-up feels more held
back. It matches her personality. Bright in its way. Controlled. Full of energy.
Her latest series, Joyful Stripes Glass Collection, follows that same path. It’s made with opaque glass
canes, her true guiding thread, her fil conducteur.
Give her three months with no boundaries and she would head to Japan. She had a one-month trip lined
up already. But she imagines longer. Time to meet glass workers who carry that same Murano vibe. They
use murrine in vivid poetic colors. She would team up with them. Build some kind of link between
places. Venetian heat meets Japanese exactness. Naturally she would roam too. Among architects and
potters. Picking up how light shifts in that world.
Spend a full day with France in Venice and she would start you on the canals. Drifting along to grasp the
city from the water side. Next stop the scuole. Those old brotherhood spots where painters and regular
people used to come together. They fixed up the town back then. She would point out Tintoretto pieces.
Veronese works too. Their colors burn like songs. For her Venice stays tied to color always. Glass. Water.
Paint. The way things mirror back.
France Thierard switched up her whole path chasing a bit of light. She puts words on paper. She shapes
forms. She moves by boat. All of it rests on one idea. Handmade stuff holds the spirit in it. Every move
with a pen or fire keeps something alive. Venice endures like glass does. Only because people keep
giving it breath.
LUCIANO & BEBA GAMBARO
We at Kilometre Paris want to introduce our muses:
Luciano & Beba Gambaro.
They spend their days around glass and fire. Still, they talk about it like it is air. Something you cannot see but cannot
live without. In Murano, it all starts with a furnace. It starts with a simple gesture or a breath. Luciano comes up with
the designs for the objects. Beba stays right there next to him. She acts as his counterpoint and his echo. Together, they
guard a craft that goes back further than anyone can remember. That craft has kept burning for over seven centuries. It
shapes more than just vessels. It shapes a whole vision of beauty.
Hand Luciano a credit card, give him three months, and let him go free. He would not run away. He would stick around,
maybe travel a bit. But he would always come back to see things, learn stuff, and bring ideas to his island. I love to turn
the world, he says. To see. To meet. To understand. For him, work does not feel like a burden. It feels like his big passion,
his very pulse. Even if he had all the time in the world, he would use it to chase light through glass. He would put his
energy into creation, not into getting away from it all.
Talk to him about the hand, and his voice gets steady. The hand, he explains, is what holds civilization in place. Italys big
industries rely on it, from marble work to mosaics. It brings history and the future together in one motion. We are the
creators of beauty, he says. Not out of pride, but out of remembering. What people call design, what they call fashion, it
all starts here. It comes from the idea of making things by hand. Making them well. Making them beautiful. Some folks
just make the things. Others just explain them. He does both. He does it with a calm sense of where he comes from.
For Luciano, Venice is like a dialogue. It is a back and forth between tradition and time. Between glass that cools too
fast and glass that still holds its glow. Between a city full of tourists and the hidden parts you only see from a boat at
dusk. From the canals, he says, the city turns into another world. He would take you there. He would guide you through
the narrow water paths where reflections take the place of roads. Where silence feels heavy. Then maybe an aperitivo.
That is the Venetian way. A terrace at sunset with a glass of ombra. A conversation that stretches on without really
ending.
But if you stayed on Murano, if you wanted a real look at their world instead of just the postcard version, he would open
a door for you. He would bring you to Matteo Tagliapietra. Matteo is a master glassblower, his collaborator and friend.
The furnace would roar to life. Night would fall around you. Ten people or so would sit before the fire. They would gather
at a long table pulled right up to the heat. They would eat eel. Bisato sullArade, roasted until the skin almost sings. It
would come with wine and laughter. With that kind of warmth that only comes to people who build things with their
hands.
Luciano calls himself a conductor. He is an artistic director, sure. But he leads through harmony, not through some
strict hierarchy. He teams up with fashion houses, artists, and designers from all over the world. He turns their ideas
into objects made of breath and flame. Every piece gets made to order. It comes from real conversations. Our work, he
says, is custom-made. It gets built from collaboration.
Still, his eyes stay fixed on what comes next. He moves from vases to sculptures. From simple vessels to big structures
that push glass to its limits. He talks about new experiments. About pieces drawn from alchemy, from love, from play.
About projects that blend Murano’s old skills with modern tech. Even with artificial intelligence. One day, visitors might
talk to the glass. They might ask for things and get stories back in return.
The work keeps changing. Always. It looks back at the past. But it pushes forward too. The glass of Murano, Luciano
says, is humble. It can handle any challenge, any subject. It can show the best in us. Even when it goes beyond tradition.
He lives right in that space. Between flame and idea, past and invention. In the shimmer of molten sand. Where craft
turns into language. And language turns into light
SARITA RADHA
We, at Kilometre Paris would like to present our muse:
Sarita Radha.
She carries two worlds in her voice, one warm with Indian earth, the other rippling with Venetian water. Her name
tastes of spice and silk, but her gestures move like the tide of the lagoon, quick, light, unafraid. She was born of
crossings: an Indian motherland near Bhopal, a Venetian grandfather who took her to the antique markets as a
child. Between them, she learned to see beauty not as perfection, but as conversation, a tension between the hand
and the idea.
Sarita is the founder of Lieu Migrant, a studio created from her need to bring together opposites: function and
fantasy, East and West, discipline and desire. “I’m an esthete,” she says. “Maybe too much.” In her work, she guides
artisans more than she creates herself. She works with glassmakers, weavers, and craftsmen, not by commanding
them, but by encouraging them, inviting accidents, and embracing imperfection. “I’m not an artisan,” she admits.
“Not an artist either. I’m a guide.” She loves to be present where creation happens, in the space between flame and
breath, between gesture and mistake, watching beauty appear from friction.
If you give her 24 hours in Venice, she will curate a day that feels like a memory. The first stop is La Madonna, a
trattoria for locals, where she orders granseola, or spider crab, sweet and briny. It reminds her of her grandfather’s
laughter. After lunch, she takes you near the Rialto Market to a column where she once hid from school, sipping a
Spritz Select and watching the boats go by. “It’s very Venetian,” she smiles. “To watch. Just to watch.” Next is the
island of San Giorgio, where she once saw an exhibition by Ettore Sottsass. From there, you see San Marco across the
water, Venice at arm’s length, luminous and unreal. Finally, she visits Bevilacqua, the historic textile house where
brocades and velvets hold centuries of craft. “Tissus are like time,” she says. “They hold stories if you touch them
right.”
Sarita now lives between Milan and Venice, but she says her soul is Parisian. “In another life, I was French,” she
laughs. “I feel freer there. Italy is still too patriarchal.” In Tuscany, she found her peace with a small love, a quick
wedding, and a landscape that holds her gently. “It’s the place of love for me,” she says, “where I can just be.”
And somewhere far away, in India, stands the hotel her grandmother built, fifteen rooms facing sacred ruins, a quiet
shelter for archaeologists, writers, pilgrims. House of William, she calls it. A place for those who listen to silence,
designed according to Vastu, the ancient discipline of harmony. “It’s where I’d go to write,” she says softly. “To think.
To begin again.”
Sarita is a weaver of places and a designer of dialogues. She builds bridges not out of stone, but out of trust,
connecting continents, crafts, and the seen with the felt. She is Venice and Bhopal, Paris and Tuscany. She is a
migrant of beauty, carrying her worlds in her hands and guiding others to shape them.
LUANA SEGATO
We at Kilometre Paris want to introduce our muse:
Luana Segato.
She came into the world in Mogliano Veneto. That spot sits between Treviso and Venice. It acts as a kind of border
where two worlds mix together. One is the solid mainland. The other is the shifting lagoon. She grew up with both of
them. She moved back and forth a lot between Padova and Venice. In Padova her big house turns into a personal
show space. It fills up with leaves and birds. In Venice her work takes in the water around it.
Her studio in Castello served as her first hideaway. She recalls the window that looked out on a fruit boat. There was
the smell of wet wood and citrus. Vendors called out their morning hellos in a steady rhythm. It was in that real
Venice. She calls it la Venezia popolana. That is where she started painting. She met people there too. It happened
quietly. One person at a time. There were no tourists she says. Only Venetians. I used to go outside to draw she says. I
did it alone.
If you spent a day with her in Venice, she would bring you there first. To that same window. To the narrow calli where
the city still feels full of life. That is where her art got its start. It came from being close to things. Not from theory or
photos. To paint she says I must see the place. I never start from an image in a book. I start from where I am.
Luna calls herself a peintrice. That means a painter. Still her work often goes beyond the frame. Her canvases use
hand-made cotton. She prepares them with pigment and attention. She primes them on her own. She sews them.
She cuts them. She puts them back together. Sewing she says is like meditation. Sometimes the stitches look like
scars. But they are not painful ones. They are scars of joining. I repair.
Her paintings are seldom just paintings. They turn into sculptures. They become installations. They act as gestures
that fill a space. Once she spread her works like carpets over Venice's bridges. She let the city finish the piece. The
artwork she says is not just the object. It is the whole setup. It is the back and forth between my work and the
space.
Water stays as her main focus. She follows its colors. The browns. The greens. The blues that seem impossible. If you
arrive by train she says and you look at the lagoon, you will see two different colors. One on each side. And next
week it will shift again. Venice comes from color. It is never the same two times.
In Padova nature takes over for water. There are birds. Leaves. The slow beat of the forest. Her studio there feels
more quiet. It stays closer to roots than to reflections. In the mountains at Bosco del Cansiglio I found enormous
birds she says. They came into my work.
Her practice relies on ongoing teamwork. She works with costume designers like Dominique Brunet. Or painters like
Anastasia Norenko. With her she prepares a big leaf sculpture for Fiera d'Arte di Lucca. It will be a work of four
hands Luna explains. I create the form. She paints inside it.
Her path started in 2002. That year she had her first show at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice. Before
that she did engravings. She painted in watercolor. She learned from David Battistini. She still calls him her maestro.
Since then she has kept up the talk between water and canvas.
To step into Luna's world means you get that art for her is a way to fix things. It mends wounds. Fabrics. Cities. Every
seam fills a break. Every color catches a breath. She asks who does not have scars. Mine are made to connect. Not to
divide.
Between Padova's land and Venice's tides she keeps stitching them. One layer at a time. Until the world feels whole
again.