Like every year, we welcome the arrival of autumn with new ideas and new projects!
On Saturday, September 21, Lottozero reopens the doors of its textile workshop for the long-awaited LOTTOZERO OPEN DAY. Come discover amazing materials and innovation through hands-on, creative experiences.

What's in store for you: an immersive day in Lottozero's workshop from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., where you can:

Discover our state-of-the-art textile machinery with live demonstrations by our team of experts.
Experiment with fabrics, colors and techniques such as embroidery, screen printing and weaving.
Be inspired by meetings with other makers and professionals from different fields.

Finally, you will have the opportunity to meet our current artist-in-residence, Carmen Schabracq, a Dutch visual artist who works with sculpture, painting, textiles, performance and costume.

We are excited to share our space of experimentation and inspiration, this is the perfect opportunity to experience the world of textile design and production up close.

Access is free
Don't miss it, we are waiting for you!

After four year of incredibly intense curatorial and research with our international partners Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź (Poland), TextielMuseum in Tilburg (Netherlands), and CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile) in Hong Kong we are proud to finally present TEXTILE CULTURE BACKUP.

This extraordinary 400-page publication, designed by award-winning graphic design Studio Mut, features 18 curators from around the world and more than 110 artists. It documents the online exhibitions held by Textile Culture Net, an international network of four cutting-edge institutions working on the bridge between textile art and design, fashion, urban regeneration, and sustainability, from 2020 to the present.
This game changing book captures the power and evolution of contemporary textile art, tackling important and current topics and is a physical archive of stories, cultures, and materials woven into powerful narratives.

TEXTILE CULTURE BACKUP will premiere on September 12 at 6:00 PM at Lottozero in Prato, Italy, in the presence of the chief curators from all four network partner institutions, as well as some of the curators involved.
The book will be available for purchase at the event and at the Lottozero online store.

Textile Culture Net is co-funded by the European Union. Through the Creative Europe 2023/2024 program Grant Agreement n°101099994

Claudia Losi, Oltre il giardino, 2022, detail, cotton Jacquard fabric, 1895 x 146 cm. Photo: Ela Bialkowska - OKNO studio

Join us next Thursday, September 12th, for the opening of Oltre il giardino, a solo exhibition by Claudia Losi, curated by Leonardo Regano and part of our On Weaving cultural program.

Oltre il giardino (Beyond the garden) explores the complex relationship between human beings, the environment and the language with which we communicate, questioning what can be understood as ‘natural place’ and bringing out micro and macro-narratives. The artist works on the ambiguity of the concept of landscape, on the perception of the environment around us, and on the blurred boundary between natural and man-made context.

The exhibition stems from Being There. Oltre il giardino, a two-year project curated by Leonardo Regano and premiered in June 2022 at the Rocca Roveresca in Senigallia, with the support of the Italian Council (IX edition, 2020).
In a site-specific installation for the Lottozero Kunsthalle are on display a Jacquard woven fabric of over 15 m and a textile book, realized with the consultancy of Lottozero and now part of the collection of the Rocca Roveresca di Senigallia.

Claudia Losi's research focuses on the relationship between man and landscape and draws inspiration from nature, science, history and anthropology. Her works have a narrative dimension that often makes use of textile, writing and language, creating dynamics of relationship and community participation.

With the support of Toscanaincontemporanea 2024
In collaboration with: Rocca Roveresca di Senigallia - Palazzao Ducale di Urbino_Direzione Regionale Musei Marche

12th September h 19: exhibition opening
13 September - 10 November 2024:
Mon-Fri 10-18 / Sat-Sun by appointment

Exciting news! The position of Office Coordinator is open at Lottozero. Will you be joining our team?

Check out all the details below, but please note that only candidates who meet the following criteria will be considered: a perfect command of both Italian and English, a strong passion for the textile industry, and either current residence in Prato or a willingness to relocate.

What Will Our Office Coordinator Do?

-       Answer phone calls and respond to standard emails regarding visits, internships, residencies, and other inquiries.

-       Welcome scheduled and unscheduled guests for workshop tours.

-       Handle daily administrative tasks, including managing supplier relations, procurement, and maintenance.

-       Manage shipment logistics, including the pickup and delivery of materials.

-       Oversee the team calendar and schedule appointments for visits, calls, meetings, and workshops.

-       Manage the logistical aspects of the residency program (e.g., email communications, calendar management, quotations).

-       Prepare standard quotations.

-       Organize the library, materials library, and digital archives.

Who We Are Looking For:

A person with a working style that is:

-        Precise and organized

-        Detail-oriented

-        Autonomous and proactive

Qualifications:

-        Must reside in Prato or be willing to relocate.

-        Work experience in the textile district is a plus.

-        Excellent spoken and written proficiency in both Italian and English.

-        Valid driver's license.

-        Strong communication skills and the ability to effectively engage with our community.

-        Demonstrates autonomy, resourcefulness, problem-solving skills, and flexibility.

-        A genuine passion for the textile industry and related activities.

What We Offer:

-       The opportunity to work with a dynamic and diverse team, welcoming guests and audiences from around the world.

-       A flexible position that provides significant decision-making autonomy and personal responsibility.

-       A beautiful and stimulating work environment.

-       Opportunities for growth and professional development.

-       Involvement in engaging and interesting projects.

Important Details:

-      Position Level: This is a junior position, ideal for individuals looking to start or grow their careers.

-      Contract Type: 30to 32-hour fixed-term contract with a strong potential for indefinite renewal based on performance. (CCNL terziario 3 livello)

How to Apply:

To apply, please complete the application survey. Make sure to upload a motivation letter explaining why you are specifically interested in working with us, along with your CV and any questions you might have.

Join us next Thursday September 12th for an exciting event at Lottozero.

The evening begins at 6 p.m. with the launch of “Textile Culture Backup,” a book that compiles the digital exhibitions curated by Textile Culture Net over the past four years. Published by Textile Culture Net and designed by Studio MUT, the book is co-funded by Creative Europe.

Following the presentation, we will open the solo exhibition “Oltre il giardino” by Claudia Losi, curated by Leonardo Regano in collaboration with Rocca Roveresca di Senigallia. This exhibition is part of our “On Weaving” cultural program, co-funded by Toscanaincontemporanea2024, which explores the intersection of weaving and contemporary art.

Expect an inspiring evening, drinks and refreshments will be served.

We look forward to seeing you!!

Carmen Schabracq (1988, Amsterdam) is a visual artist and works in various media including sculpture, textile, painting, performances and costumes. The mask is a recurring object and theme within her work, with which she explores the layered nature of human identity and her own identity as a -female- artist and mother. She collects fragments of stories and characters from various myths, (folk) art history and her own experiences and uses them to create a visual story.
During her residency at Lottozero Carmen wants to turn her research on her Jewish ancestors and family name SCHABRACQ - which means horse or saddle blanket - into a body of textile works connected to the horse.

Carmen was born in Amsterdam where she lives, works and graduated in visual arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (2012), after a year of painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. She obtained her Masters degree in theater costume design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (2015).

Carmen Schabracq, I am a mother now

We are very happy to announce that Lottozero has it’s very own, brand new, Domestika class online!

We’ve been working on the topic of archives since the very beginnings of Lottozero and now we are excited to share our ideas and researches with you in this online class:

CREATIVE TEXTILE DESIGN WITH HISTORICAL MATERIALS is a class you can take to explore creative methods to use archival materials as starting point for your new personal projects in textile and fashion design, but also art and much, much more.

Check it out here and enjoy some creative idea hunting on archives with us!

HAVE FUN!

As you know in spring of 2024 Lottozero became the first organization in Italy to make the ultra-modern TC2 loom available to the public, this has inspired us to create the cultural program ON WEAVING.

Now, thanks to the support of the region of Tuscany with Toscanaincontemporanea 2024, we are thrilled to announce an OPEN CALL for designers and artists, offering a member of our community the opportunity to work with the TC2 for free.

What does this residency provide?

• 24h access and a personal desk at the Lottozero's shared, co-working space and laboratory in Prato

• 24h access to a TC2 digital jacquard loom (3W, 110 cm weaving width warped at 12 ends per cm, 1320 ends in total, 100% cotton in natural color)

• access to other weaving, spinning and knitting equipment in the lab, access to traditional and novel weaving materials

• mentorship, logistical and technical support from the Lottozero staff to insure the successful realization of the project

• Participation in company and museum visits

The residency scheduling is flexible but should be in total 1 working week and should take place between October and November 2024  (please indicate your preference in the application) in Prato, Italy. The resident will receive 400 Euros as expense reimbursement and a materials budget of 200 Euros**. The artist will be responsible for locating housing and travel to and from Lottozero.

** materials budget does not go directly to artist, but is to be spent by the lab during the residency on supplies determined by the artist.

While we can provide instructions for getting started on the TC2 and if needed a prior consultancy on the digital file preparation, the artist is ultimately responsible for the design and the execution of the final piece.

A basic knowledge of hand weaving is required.

TO APPLY:

Please submit a portfolio with motivation letter outlining your goals for the residency and any past or current projects relating to textiles; your portfolio or website/instagram to opencall@lottozero.org

Applications are due September 1st, 2024

Applicants will be notified by September 18th, 2024

Welcome designer Isabel Wolfs, who will be at Lottozero for a one month residency!

Isabel Wolfs is a designer who specializes in sportswear, streetwear, and footwear. Her driving force is a fascination with materials and techniques. Trained as both a maker and designer, her creative process begins with researching a product's technical details, while remaining highly conscious of its impact. Coupled with her love for nature and sports, her approach to design prioritizes quality and sustainability.

These personal interests are reflected in Studio Wolfs, which explores experimental research design that challenges our perceptions of products. The studio focuses on product design through material research and craftsmanship, with a particular dedication to upcycling and sustainability. Studio Wolfs aims to highlight the importance of reconsidering how we make and value products, promoting a long-term perspective over a short-term one, by presenting materials and elements in a different light.

Fresh updates from Refashionized project!

Our team is is currently finalizing the Trainer’s Corner which encompasses resources and training materials for youth workers and trainers to support them in conducting training session with young people on two themes: History of Fashion and Sustainable Fashion.

Last month we met the other partners in Valencia for the second Transnational Meeting hosted by UPV Politecnica de Valencia. Here we had the chance to discuss the project’s progress, with a special focus on the Trainer’s Corner.

Read the full newsletter here and keep up to date on Refashionized social media: Facebook  , Instagram and TikTok .

We are looking forward to share the first results of the project with you! 

Miriam Del Seppia, Processes of unstable chemistry, 2023

Miriam Del Seppia is a visual and textile artist working across botanical dyeing, textiles, painting, drawing, ceramics and gardening. Her process-driven practice focuses on plants, fibers and colors as a way of exploring connections with specific living worlds and their embedded knowledge. Colors and textiles are not only carrying fundamental expressive qualities, but are also a medium of relation, rooted in the surrounding ecosystem. Through slow processes of self-teaching, learning from intimacy, affection and from other-than-humans, she circles around matters of care, ecology and de-growth.

Miriam is originally from Tuscany and currently based in Rotterdam, where she graduated in Visual Arts from the Piet Zwart Institute.

Soft activism. Textile art as a healing force is the 4th and last online exhibition of 2023/2024 Textile Culture Net program, curated by Hilde Skancke Pedersen.

When textile is used in artworks carrying stringent political themes and addressing harsh realities and suffering, the supple and often fragile materials often pose a potent opposition to the frequently tragic origins of the ideas behind the textiles.
The exhibition seeks to convey several artists’ reactions to attacks, colonization and recolonization of vulnerable countries, peoples and cultures all over the world, also focusing on themes such as racism, persecution, the exotification and exploitation of peoples and cultures, totalitarianism, war - and solidarity and healing.

Featured artists: Mari Meen Halsøy, Ala Savashevich, Hussein Shikha, Labay Eyong, Bindweefsel project, Jakkai Siributr, Krystle Lemonias, 100 Flag Collective.

Each year Textile Culture Net invites guest curators to join its curatorial team proposing an exhibition theme to which other curators react with an artwork proposition. This dialogue shapes a dynamic exchange of views, methods and perspectives on textile.

TCN’s online exhibitions are published on the institutions’ and guest curators’ Instagram accounts, connected by the hashtag #TextileCultureNet.

TCN’s fourth edition for 2023/2024 is co-funded by the European Union, within the framework of the prestigious Creative Europe program.
Grant Agreement n°101099994.

Mari Meen Halsøy, WOUNDS, 2010, present and ongoing, tapestry. Photo credit: Mari Meen Halsøy

We are excited to welcome Priss Niinikoski for a week residency, part of our On Weaving program.

Priss Niinikoski (FI/FR) is an artist/researcher working with textiles beyond soft surfaces. She explores the element of ‘risk’ when operating with tools and systems. Conceptually her works investigate material cultures and the ethical complexities of designing technologies, preservation and replication. Her artistic focus is on contemporary application of craft, material studies and their relation with technologies.
Niinikoski is actively combining textiles with sonic and digital materialities. Her interest is in positioning bodies in technologies to create personal interactions and companionships that formulate through material engagements. Building up on coding interactive environments and electronic textiles interfaces her studies currently focus on gesturality, translation between the digital and the analogue and how uncertainties, the risks that bodies pose in systems, embark new patterns for expression.

As an alumni of The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in 2022 her graduate collection was one of the 10 finalist at the 37th edition of International HyeĚres Festival for Fashion, Photography and Accessories. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Germany, Belgium, France, Japan and the Netherlands.

Artist Talk: June 14th, 6.30 pm

Lisa Batacchi, The Spirt will Return to Us, 2023-2024, tapestry, lacquered yarns with silk core, silks from various sources, ramie, raffia, 145 x 220 cm

SAVE THE DATE!

Join us next Thursday, June 13th, for the opening of “Sand Storms in Medio Mundi I-III”, a solo exhibition by Lisa Batacchi curated by Alessandra Tempesti, the start of our “On Weaving” program.

“Sand Storms in Medio Mundi I-III” is an investigation on the element of the earth and its connections within the sky, inspired by the work of philosopher and orientalist Henri Corbin. This intermediate axis between earth and sky is explored through a series of large tapestries hand woven by the artist, in collaboration with expert weavers and textile restorers. The title alludes to the sandstorms along the Silk Road, crossroads of cultures, religions and trade.

h 17.30: Artist Talk with Lisa Batacchi, in dialogue with Federica Forti, art historian, lecturer and independent curator, and Alessandra Tempesti, Lottozero Kunsthalle’s curator.

h 19: Exhibition Opening

June 13th, 10am-6pm: BASIC WEAVING WITH JACQUELINE STOJANOVIC

For the basic weaving workshop with Jacqueline Stojanovic, participants will be provided with a frame loom (an instrument that can easily be reconstructed on their own) on which they will learn the technique of tapestry weaving, which will lead them to create a completed work at the end of the activity.

In the second part of the day, artist and weaver Jacqueline Stojanovic will introduce the technique of hand weaving with Lottozero's large heald loom; all participants will be given the opportunity to try this technique, with which a collective fabric will take shape. All materials are provided by Lottozero. No prior knowledge of weaving is required.

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.it/e/919545985797

June 20th, 10am-6pm: JACQUARD LOOM WEAVING TC2 WITH NICOLETTA DI GAETANO

Participants will be guided by 'expert weaver Nicoletta di Gaetano to discover the innovative TC2 digital Jacquard loom from the company Digital Weaving Norway (more information at the end of the document).

After an introduction devoted to introducing the machinery and its capabilities, participants will engage in a series of design tests, moving from analog to digital. The three main weaves will be mentioned, then focusing on some derivatives. Each participant will have time to independently weave their own sample, choosing from a series of graphics prepared by Lottozero. All materials are provided by Lottozero. Basic knowledge of weaving is required

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.it/e/919551241517

June 27th, 10am-6pm: HILO CREATIVE SPINNING WITH SARA DIAZ

The HILO E-Spinner is an electronic spinning wheel and is the ideal starting point for learning to spin and create fancy yarns. During the workshop, Sara Diaz (founder of Hilo Textiles) will teach participants the techniques of carding and spinning, both with classic machines and the brand new HILO E-Spinner. The goal is to gain a basic understanding of carding and spinning techniques, from fiber to yarn. All materials are provided by Lottozero and are sponsored by DHG SHOP https://www.dhgshop.it/index.php No prior knowledge of spinning is required.

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.it/e/919556517297

 All workshops are 50€ maximum 10 participants

The On Weaving workshop program is kindly sponsored and funded by the City of Prato, in collaboration with:  Creative People in Florence, lofoio makerspace, Weavers Coordination

Jiajia Qi, Maybe Very Happy, 2022

Jiajia Qi is a Netherlands-based Chinese artist. Her work is just like dust in the room, which has no recognizable outline and is thought to be in the wrong place. It always stands in the middle of its unrelated things, with no recognized past and no predictable future; it is not something that is ‘beyond or next’ to viewers, but rather something ‘within or part’ of them. Her work blurs the boundaries between artificial and natural, interior and exterior, fictional and factual, in order to stimulate viewers to compare what their surroundings offer up for observation and what they actually observe. She creates experiential site-specific installations that incorporate interactive settings, spatial structures, and sculptural elements. 

During the residency at Lottozero she will approach several weaving techniques, testing different woven structures, in order to create a room-size textile installation, playing with the transparency of the threads and the darkness of the environment.

Lottozero will join Global Fashion Exchange on Friday, May 24th, 2024, from 17:00 to 23:00, with LOTTOZERO Fashion Exchange: a garment swap event in Prato, Italy, featuring DJ sets by Michelle Davis and Claudio Capitoni .
The event will also serve as the final celebration for Hannes Egger’s exhibition Second Skin.

How does a SWAP party work? To join the swap, guests are asked to contribute up to 10 items with a suggested retail value of 10 Euros or more. For each item contributed guests will receive tickets that can be used to exchange for items that are new to them. Items can be dropped off at Lottozero during opening hours from 9:30 – 18:00 starting the 8th of May 2024 or brought directly to the event. Find all infos and book your slot on Eventbrite.