This feature appears in V136 now available for purchase

The world, oddly enough, thrives on contradiction. And in that space, so does the work of Flaminia Veronesi. The Italian artist has always held a fascination for using the mythical, the fantastical, and the otherworldly to challenge our notions of the realistic and scientific, but only by embracing and understanding what they are first.

“Holding in my hands something conceived from my imagination and coming up with the way to make that process a reality was my new favorite game of all, and still is,” she says of her first tissue sculpture, made when she was five years old. She exists in a space where a boat supported by chicken legs and a painting of a mermaid befriending a dragon can be in the same room.

Despite the patriarchal society she grew up in and the difficulty of initially sustaining herself on her art, “the use of play and fantasy to challenge reality, its taboos, and nowadays shame regimes,” is too enticing to refuse. Veronesi has taken her art to the world, having exhibited in London, Milan, even Paris. By bringing the beings of her dreams into the real world, she’s managed to bring the life of her dreams to the real world, too. And as long as humans can keep imagining, Veronesi will keep creating.

This feature appears in V136 now available for purchase