MUNTHE ART MONDAY:
MANUELA CATANIA

Please introduce yourself and tell us about what you do.

I am Manuela Catania, a Sicilian sensory designer and artist living and working between Sicily and India.

With a background in architecture and a specialisation in Jewellery and Accessories Design, my practice moves across sensory installations, jewellery, textiles, painting. I see these disciplines as different expressions of one creative language, exploring space, form, material, light and human experience.

My work is deeply connected to the senses. Texture, colour, movement, light and touch are central to the way I create, often working with reclaimed textiles and transforming them into new forms and experiences.

Living between Sicily and India has enriched my creative language with two cultures deeply connected to craftsmanship, colour, nature, ritual and the poetry of the handmade.

At the heart of my practice is a desire to create beauty that can be experienced, not simply observed.

Manuela is wearing our VATOSHA SKIRT.

Can you name some other female artists that inspire you and explain why they do so?

Lina Bo Bardi is an important inspiration from me. An Italian woman who made Brazil her home, she transformed the meeting between cultures into an extraordinary creative language. I am fascinated by Casa de Vidro, her relationship with Brazilian craftsmanship and popular culture, and her ability to create spaces that feel both visionary and deeply human. Her journey resonates with my own experience of living between cultures. Sicily is an essential part of my identity, while India has expanded my way of seeing and creating. I find enormous creative richness in allowing different cultures to become part of one's visual language.

Elsa Peretti is particularly meaningful to me through my work with jewellery. She transformed jewellery into something intimately connected to the body, movement and everyday life. I admire the purity and sensuality of her forms and the unmistakable language she developed between Italy and New York. She showed how a jewel can become more than an ornament — it can become a gesture, a feeling, almost a second skin.

B. Prabha has a very special place in my visual world. I am drawn to her elongated female figures, luminous colours and quiet presence. There is an extraordinary poetry and dignity in the way she portrayed women. Her paintings communicate through atmosphere and emotion, which resonates deeply with my own sensory approach to art.

Manuela is wearing our VATOSHA SKIRT.

What would you like people to notice in your artwork?

I want my work to be felt before it is explained. Texture, colour, light, movement and material invite the senses to become part of the experience. A textile can carry the memory of a place, a gesture or a body. A jewel can become a landscape of light against the skin. A spatial installation can transform the way someone moves through and experiences a place.

I am interested in creating a dialogue between the artwork, the space and the person encountering it.

Ultimately, I want my work to leave a sensation behind, something luminous, intimate and personal that continues to resonate long after the encounter.

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

Being a woman is an essential part of my creative perspective. It has shaped my relationship with intuition, sensitivity, observation and emotion, qualities that naturally enter the way I work with materials, spaces and people.

I see femininity as a creative intelligence, capable of bringing together intuition and precision, softness and strength, emotion and structure. This perspective has led me to create work that celebrates presence, individuality and the richness of the feminine experience.

I am particularly interested in creating experiences that invite women to connect with their own presence and sense of self.

Manuela is wearing our VINTAGER OUTERWEAR and VIOLOGEN PANTS.

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

For me, the most important part of the journey has been giving myself the freedom to define my own creative language. I have always been naturally drawn to different disciplines, materials and cultures, and I value the freedom to allow an idea to take the form it needs. For me, confidence comes from clarity - knowing what I am drawn to, what I want to communicate and where I want to take my work.

I see femininity as a source of creative intelligence: intuitive, perceptive, sensual and powerful. And I believe that when a woman fully embraces her own vision, she creates a space for other women to recognise the possibilities within theirs.