The artist, who lives between Paris and Veneto, where her grandfather worked as a ceramics artist and where she now has her own studio, is focused on continuing the family legacy. She is collaborating with Martin Margiela and preparing a new project in Paris.
"I started working with ceramics 10 years ago. One summer, while studying for my MFA at Columbia University, I decided to go to Veneto, Italy, to the town where my family is from and where I hadn't been back since I was two years old,” says Jenna Basso Pietrobon from her home in Paris. This region of Italy is especially known for its ceramics.
“My grandfather and great-grandparents were ceramicists. My grandfather emigrated to Canada and built a lamp factory,” she explains. Although she didn’t learn the ceramic technique from him—he passed away when she was 13—she felt a strong pull toward her family’s medium: clay. “Technically, he’s my mother’s father, but he’s like another grandfather to me. He was 85 when I arrived in Italy and was still working in his ceramic workshop.”
She finished her art studies in Colombia and then went to Ontario College of Art in Canada. After her early work in New York, including a large ceramic installation titled Terra ferma measuring two meters tall, “That’s when I understood this was going to be my path.” Even so, she doesn't yet define herself as just a ceramicist but rather a multidisciplinary artist. “My work reflects what’s going on in my life at any given moment. When I discovered sex, I painted about it. When my grandmother died, I went through a period of painting our oldest family memories.”
It was when she moved to Italy and started the Breaking the Mold project, in support of handmade ceramics from her ancestors' land, that everything clicked.
Now she lives between Paris and Veneto, where her studio and creative focus are based. Her work, which can be admired at [her website] jennabassopietrobon.com, has caught the attention of fashion house Maison Margiela. “It’s a very special brand to me. Very artistic, in the truest sense of the word. Fine and full of creativity. I create unique figures for their clients, and I’m working on a very fun new project for the city of Paris and its history. But I can’t talk about it yet,” she concludes.
Photos: Angelina Stypa, Giulio Favioto, Federica Baralassina
