BIOGRAPHY

Giulia Nelli was born in Legnano (Milan, Italy) in 1992. She graduated at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and obtained a Master’s degree in Exhibition Design at Politecnico of Milan (IDEA). In 2019 she attended the course of Contemporary Tapestry at the School of Applied Arts of Milan’s Castello Sforzesco. She is enrolled in the Master’s programme in Art Therapy and Expressive Therapies at the Catholic University of Milan for the academic year 2025/2026.

Her work analyses the relationship between people and their natural and social environment, convinced that it is necessary to re-build the ties that have become liquid due to the new media and that need to find a new sense in real life. The use of textile (mainly tights) fabricsallows her to enhance the role of gesture and manual skill bringing her in direct contact with matter. Tights’ fabric is dismembered, according to a technique of tearing and disassembling dear to contemporary art.
The fabric is brought back to its basic element, the thread, which is then manipulated to build new balances and harmonies. Make and unmake, weave and re-weave is the story and the image of life. It is the ability that allows women in all myths of ancient populations to weave in a single weft emotions, words and silences, memories and hope for the future.

Parallel to her art activity, Giulia Nelli has been teaching in art workshops for children.

Her installation Tra radici sopite e arida pietra (Between dormant Roots and dry Stone) is part of the Anthropocene Collection of MUSE – Trento Science Museum. Thanks to the Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea (Plan for Contemporary Art) PAC2022- 2023 promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture.

EXHIBITIONS, PRIZES AND SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATIONS

She participated in several exhibitions in Italy and abroad, often realising site-specific installations.
Site-specific Installations were realised e.g.:
in 2025, in a collettive exhibition in Homo Viator, curated by Nicolò Fiammetti e Anna Paolini at Museo Diocesano in Brescia; in 2024, in bi-personal exhibition FUORI DA DENTRO, curated by An Paenhuysen and Mengyin Wang at ARTRA Gallery in Milan and in a collettive exhibition Connexxion. Festival Diffuso di Arte Contemporanea, curated by Livia Savorelli at the former prison Sant’Agostino Savona.
in 2023, in her solo exhibition Riverbero di luce. All’ombra del silenzio, curated by Domenico Maria Papa, in the context of Art Site Fest, Chiesa dello Spirito Santo, Govone (CN); in her solo exhibition Silenzio condiviso, curated by Sabino Maria Frassà, Palazzo Morando (Museo Costume Moda Immagine), Milan; in the colletive exhibition Utopiche seduzioni. Dai nuovi materiali alla Recycled Art. Da Piero Manzoni alle nuove generazioni (Utopistic Seduction. From New Materials to Recycled Art. From Piero Manzoni to the Last Generations), curated by Nadia Stefanel and Matteo Galbiati, Fondazione Dino Zoli, Forlì as well as in the collective exhibition Filo doppio where she presented her project with master goldsmith Armando Bianco, curated by Lia Lenti and Domenico Papa, Valenza.
In 2022, in the exhibition Texture of Resistance, COSMO Space, curated by Camilla Boemio in Rome; in the exhibition THE SOFT REVOLUTION curated byBarbara Pavan and ArteMorbida Textile Arts Magazine in Museo del Tessile (Busto Arsizio, Italy) and in the exhibition WE ARE THE FLOOD curated by Stefano Cagol, Spazio Archeologico Sotterraneo (Trento, Italy).

Her exhibitions abroad include, in 2020, The Looking Glass and behind it curated by Italian Cultural Institute of St Petersburg and The Museum of St. Petersburg Art (20th–21st centuries) at St Petersburg, and, in 2019, Untitled at Inthependant Gallery in Porto (Portugal) and Textile Matière à Sculpter at The Fibery – FiberArtGallery in Paris.

In 2025 Giulia Nelli won the Crown Fine Art Award and in 2022 she won the ninth edition of Premio Cramum, curated by Sabino Maria Frassà and she was finalist in several competitions, such as: The 10th International Biennial Exhibition of Mini Textile Art “Scythia” 2021, Ukraine; the Young Fiber Contest 2020 (Chieri), Humans 2018 Miniartextil curated by Arte&Arte (Como, Montrouge, Busto Arsizio and Caudry), Premio Morlotti-Imbersago 2018 and 2021 (Permanente di Milano and Imbersago, Italy) and the Art Prize CBM 2017/2018 (Turin and Prague).

ART FAIRS
2024, ArtVerona, stand Artra Gallery (F8 G7 e INNOVA 12), 11-13 October 2024, Verona
2024, The Others Art Fair, stand Artra Gallery, 31 October – 3 November, Torino

ART RESIDENCES
2024, TERRARIUM, conflitti uomo-natura, Travacò Siccomario (Pavia)
2022, selected for the bimonthly residence at Villa Greppi, curated by Simona Bartolena, Monticello Brianza (LC).

MONOGRAPHIC VOLUME
Giulia Nelli, Monografia, Tipografia Valdostana, (ISBN 9791280492203), Aosta 2022

PERSONAL STATEMENT

I called my poetics “Legàmi – Légami” (Ties – tie-me) as all my work is shaped around the complex interweaving among ties that build a person’s identity and unfolds through one’s connections with one’s home territory and the people of one’s community. Such ties lean in our memory and become thoughts, meanings and mind-sets, building a bridge between past and future and shaping our individual perception of time.
In a society, characterised by “light and liquid” ties, temporary connections among individuals which require a minimum investment in terms of relationships and in cultural terms. The pandemic showed us on the contrary the beauty of long-lasting and responsible relations, of cooperative relations and of new ways of coexistence, able to seamlessly integrate, in Earth’s symbiotic life, cultural, economic, urbanistic and technological elements.
The works that address environmental issues and that use the metaphor of the subsoil to show the beauty of the cooperative links between the different parts of the entire system and the importance for the functioning of society of what often remains invisible, outside the media spotlight, also fit into this context.
Actually, in the soil communities of flora and fauna are integrated in a complex network, which gives priority to the maintenance of symbiotic ties: this image can offer an innovative perspective on how to carry forward the challenge of survival taking care of the habitat and of Earth’s reproductive capacity.
In my work I use more types of materials of both natural and industrial origin, of which I transform the original functionality to create works that incorporate their symbolic meaning.
In the face of the rich and threatening legacy left by the post-industrial era, that combines progress and catastrophe, I believe that an aesthetic of integration and hybridization of figures and materials belonging to the environment and human activities is interesting in order to encourage looking beyond the chaos of signs accumulated by human activity on the territory and create a new balance between humanity and nature.

In my installations the work is material, realized with pieces of tights left whole, combined as to create a game of transparencies in the space. The effect is obtained by combining tights of different thickness, in order to better play with the shadows that such elegant and smooth material is able to create.
In these works I often use the color black. However, thanks to the different thickness of the tights, far from using black as a single color, I split it up in a multifaceted palette of different hues. This allows me to create contrasts among the different parts of the installation in a game of empty and full.