MUNTHE ART MONDAY: ELISA STRINNA

Please introduce yourself and tell us about what you do.

My name is Elisa Strinna, and I am an Italian artist based in the Netherlands. I create environmental installations that combine sculpture, light, sound, and film. Over the past five years, I have focused primarily on porcelain, developing sculptures at different scales that explore the interactions between human and non-human beings in diverse contexts: from the underseaworld, where internet infrastructures intersect with marine life, to the human body and its relationships with medicinal plants intraditional European healing practices. I conceive of theseworks as material explorations of relational systems and practices of world-making, grounded in a study of morphology.

Alongside my sculptural practice, I have created short films that merge documentary and fiction. These works bring attention to existing yet often overlooked realities connected to extreme environments: from the Mediterranean Sea - its depths inhabited by marine life and internet cables, its surface crossed by African migrants seeking a different life - to Antarctica and the desert, where simulations of space missions highlight the implications of isolation and survival in hostile conditions

Elisa is wearing our LESTINE jacket from our FALL WINTER 2025 collection.

What has been the most challenging aspect of being a woman in the arts?

I believe we are still in the process of developing a new tradition.The presence of women in the arts is relatively recent: for most ofthe past two thousand years in Western culture, artists have been predominantly men. We are accustomed to thinking of culture as universal, yet cultural production is always shaped by factors such as economics, geography, and gender. The culture we inherit is never neutral - it is situated and specific.Today, in Western culture, many of us are questioning what kind of women and men we want to be, what visions and values should circulate, and how gender might contribute to this transformation. This questioning is both inspiring and deeply challenging.

Could you explain more about how being a woman has affected your career?

My gender has influenced my work in different ways. From a career perspective, it hasn’t always been easy. Growing up in Italy, a country still strongly shaped by patriarchal beliefs, I often found it challenging as a woman to assert my voice as an author. Women are still not always taken seriously within the cultural field, even if things are slowly improving. At the same time, being a woman has shaped the way I work: it has often placed me in a listening position, which has become central to my practice. This stance has led me to give space to overlooked narratives and has drawn me toward radical thinking and eco feminist methodologies.

What would you like people to notice in your artwork?

For me, making is never separated from thinking. My works grow slowly out of a dialogue where different forms of knowledge converge. What matters to me is that the final form carries traces of this process. I hope viewers can sense this: that they encounter a space where ideas, materials, and stories intertwine. What I want is for information and research to be felt, not only understood, through the aesthetic experience.

Can you name some other female (artist) that inspires you and explain why they do so?

In relation to my ceramic practice, I feel a strong affinity with the work of Chiara Camoni, an Italian artist who, like me, explores the relationship between the human and the non-human, as well as local folklore within Italian culture. I am drawn to her imaginative universe and to the way she engages with ceramic material, shaping it into installations that are both rich and vibrant. Her approach resonates with my own interest in weaving together material exploration, mythology, and everyday life.

Elisa is wearing our ROGER TOP.

Photographer: Lisa Meijer