In the Apuan Alps, once home to the Apuans, I have been working within a landscape where abandoned villages, bridges, caves, and fragmented infrastructure remain embedded in the terrain. These spaces feel like sites of ongoing negotiation between human construction and geological time - architecture gradually absorbed by the landscape.

My experience of restoration in this context has shifted away from ideas of repair or return. Instead, it feels closer to continuity. Material, site, and intervention exist in a constant state of dialogue, where nothing is isolated from its environment. Rather than imposing form, the work begins with observation of structure, erosion, vegetation, and light as it moves across surfaces that are neither fully intact nor fully abandoned.

What has become increasingly clear to me is that these spaces already hold their own logic. Stone, timber, decay, and growth establish conditions that cannot be ignored. Any gesture within them becomes a response rather than an assertion. In this sense, restoration becomes a practice of alignment—working with what remains, rather than against it.

Living and working in these environments has reshaped my understanding of process. Painting, foraging, building, and observing are interconnected acts, guided by attention rather than predetermined outcome. The pace is deliberate, shaped by material presence and environmental rhythm. It reflects a process-led textile art exploring uncertainty, where meaning emerges gradually through sustained engagement with place and material.

The surrounding ecology deepens this sensibility. Wild herbs, fruit, and native plants carry a refined intelligence—both practical and sensory—rooted in their adaptation to altitude and season. They extend the understanding of material as responsive, relational, and temporally aware.

A material philosophy grounded in restraint and reciprocity. These abandoned structures are reactivated as living sites where perception, environment, and material continue to unfold together with precision.