Primordial forms, the history of objects and archetypes have been founding principles of Arianna Lelli Mami's design practice. As one half of celebrated Milanese design practice Studiopepe, her practical furniture, lighting and objects infuse artistic expressions with the constraints of industrial design, every time resulting in a finished product that puts human gestures at the centre of the conversation.
Lelli Mami's latest project removes her work from the practical confinements of everyday use into a more intimate realm. Shown at Milan's Oxilia gallery until 8 April 2026, 'Clay Ink Paper' is a display of clay figurines, maquettes and sets that straddle the abstract and the figurative.
'Clay Ink Paper': Arianna Lelli Mami at Oxilia Gallery
'The exhibition brings together a series of intimate sculptural environments: small-scale architectures, cabinets and constructed stages that assemble natural fragments, hybrid creatures, found objects and ceramic reproductions,' writes design curator Silvana Annicchiarico. 'Removed from their original function, these elements are repositioned within carefully composed constellations. The human figure is largely absent; what remains are partial traces – a hand, an eye, a foot – suggesting presence through fragmentation rather than representation.
The works on display looks like a collector's cabinet of curiosities. Lelli Mami divides her creations in different creative clusters: there are 'Grounded Pieces', namely raised vessels standing on anthropomorphic legs which she describes 'as points of contact with the ground; a bridge to stability and belonging.'
There are Altars, whose design is informed by her passion for finding and gathering natural objects, which she catalogues in boxes; these objects are translated into the Altars' ceramic surfaces. 'They Roman domestic tabernacles, once placed inside homes to protect the family,' she shares. 'Here, however, no human figures appear. Instead, objects assume the role of symbolic agents, opening multiple interpretations regarding nature, ritual and function.'
Lelli Mami's series of Cabinet Universalis, meanwhile, are boxes, stages, architectures, small environments: they encapsulate the concept of the wunderkammer in miniature form. '[They are] magical containers in which fragments of a daily life, at times dreamlike, archaic, fable-like, are assembled. Signs, objets trouvés and small sculptural forms coexist, narrating minimal stories that, for the artist, become moments of epiphany.'
The exhibition is brought together by a tapestry that serves as a backdrop for the works, a large curtain imprinted with a universe of signs and symbols, through which, the designer explains, 'the space itself becomes an artwork.'
The signs are part of Lelli Mami's ongoing studies and research into the topic, and draw from her knowledge of primitive scripts, ritualistic marks and pre-writing symbols, also inspired by the work of anthropologist Maria Gimbutas, an expert of prehistoric symbolic language and its connection with fractal cosmology.
'Rather than invoking a nostalgic return to the primitive, Lelli Mami engages archetype as a contemporary critical tool,' continues Annicchiarico. 'In a cultural landscape defined by excess and acceleration, her commitment to reduction, repetition and material attention proposes an alternative temporality, grounded in slowness, observation and tactile knowledge.'
