How Spaces Tell Stories: Valentina Ciuffi on Staying Calm and Discovering New Things - Friends of Friends / Freunde von Freunden (FvF)

It might sound terrible, but I’m not a very relaxed person. There is a big peak of work during the Salone del Mobile, but then, a week after the Salone, I learned that I have to keep the adrenaline going, and do a full week of intense work at Studio Vedèt. It took me years to understand that I need to be back, do routine stuff, but still work. My first instinct would be a change of scenario. I’m a traveller. So for many years, I would always go travelling straight away. But now, I de-escalate first. I go slightly slower, but not 100% slow. So this year, after 12 days of winding down, I escaped — I often do this just with my husband, without my daughter. Lately, I’ve been struggling a lot with finding new places though. I’ve travelled since I was 17. I went everywhere, Africa, America, Asia, and all over Europe, a lot before globalisation properly took over. Now, I suffer a bit when I look at places that used to be so authentic — going back to Marrakesh now kills me. I’m not a nostalgic person — the world needs to move. But travelling doesn’t have the same quality any longer. So last year I went to Algeria, twice even. This year, I went to a micro-place that I didn’t even want to name, neither here nor on social media, so it stays peaceful. This makes me think of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick quote “It is not down on any map; true places never are”.

I really can’t easily switch it off. Sometimes I manage to do it at home, I also try to do it with my daughter. Aesthetics is always a focus, I really care and I try to surround myself with objects I really like even in my everyday life, usually designed by people I know.

I do very little research for collectibles through the internet — I need to see the pieces in real life, and to meet the people behind them. I didn’t have much money when I was studying. I was a good student, but the final thesis took me 18 months — I did my thesis on buildings that were falling apart, then being transformed into temporary art spaces. So that was already an Alcova situation. I spent a year and a half travelling on very little money, finding abandoned spaces that were going to be transformed. My family went crazy. But I think seeing with your eyes and experiencing with your body — be it a space, or a work of art — is totally different.

I tell all my clients to take beautiful pictures, and have an incredible online vitrine. But for me it doesn’t really replace the encounter.

I studied semiotics in a very special university setting in Bologna that Umberto Eco managed to keep open for about 7 years. Back then, he was teaching at DAMS (Discipline delle arti, della musica e dello spettacolo), and then he managed to start this course, with very few people, only about 100–150, which was super super small. I really wanted to do literature, but my mum insisted that I should do the test for this sort of science of communication course. I really didn’t want to do it, and I came back from three months in Cuba, did the test without studying, but then it was pure luck. In the end, I went, and Eco at that point was lecturing us himself, then also left teaching to other amazing professors like Paolo Fabbri, Lucia Corrain, Mario Lupano.
Semiotics starts from texts — the approach is that everything is a text. The mirror in front of you is legible as a text. It encourages you to understand the history of art through association, in a more paradigmatic way, discover patterns, showing you even improbable associations. You go to a painting and say “the sky is always at the top and that is associated with serendipity”, for example. It’s very intuitive. My brain works exactly like that. Semiotics is very complex, and the analytical approach it gives you is, too — that’s exactly how I work.

After being a journalist for many years, I looked back at what I was able to do, and semiotics gives you a tool — Eco wouldn’t like this, as semiotics shouldn’t produce but mainly read texts — but it gives you the ability to analyse what’s there, and it makes you a better creator. So everything I analyse for my clients can profit from my original way of looking at things through semiotics.

My daughter most definitely taught me to follow my own path even more than before, not to follow the standard time of work. Even when I was a journalist, and I was going to an office every day, like for Abitare, it was in a mega building, with a badge and everything, but I would never go there before lunch. I took that liberty. Nights for me have always been more productive. I can be much more efficient if I can work on my terms. I always start slowly in the morning — I might wake up early to have a little time just for myself. My husband works with the US — he always starts work around lunchtime Italian time. I usually work until 8:30pm/9pm almost every night. We have a nanny to look after Lina in the afternoons. In the morning I do meetings in town, do calls, but I still never go to the office before midday. My daughter really helped me understand the way I function much much better.

Almost everything at home is made by friends. They are all designers. I am the only Italian drinking soluble coffee, so the electric kettle is crucial, but it’s a George Sowden piece. Hmmm. It seems everything has a design value at my home. I walk through the house with wooden sandals that everyone hates me for. They have a very basic artisanal design, and I buy a new pair every year. Oh, maybe my cat, it really isn’t designed.

I am very curious about many artistic fields — like movies, design, art — and discover them myself. But with music, I am happy to be totally dependent on others. I had flatmates with great musical taste in the past, and now it’s my husband. He is great at selecting the right music, and I have no say. I am embarrassing — I can confuse Bob Dylan with the Rolling Stones. So I listen to fantastic music, but I am very passive.

In the studio, my team have an agreement that every day someone else is choosing the music. Just when I work, and write, on my own — when I need to properly focus, I love silence.

I would probably go for Paolo Conte: He is an incredible singer. I consider him, and Fabrizio de André, and De Gregori, writers, more than just singers. I would love to speak to Paolo about relationships, and sex, and attraction — when I was a teenager and started listening to his music, his music had a very strong effect on me, as I was identifying with a lot of his female characters.

I finally found the man of my life — before I met a lot of the wrong kind. A lot of them are friends now. So I was lucky in some sort of way that it took me so long to find the best. Paolo was married for a long time, but I guess he has a lot of experience in sentimental relationships, had a lot of romantic encounters, so I guess we’d have a lot to talk about.

I’m always scared about the organisation, the logistics. Pieces might not arrive, and that can destroy a show.

Also, I must say I am getting old, and I was always full of doubt when I was younger and I’m much less now. I started being a curator relatively late in life, as I was a journalist before — which I think is also a form of curation. Luckily my previous bosses were also of this opinion, that you need to curate a good article.

I’ve always had a lot of good instinct, but when I started curating I often doubted whether people liked what I was doing. Luckily I don’t have that any longer.

For the show I did at Nilufar someone said “these things are so ugly” — that she was shaking looking at the ugliness. But I wasn’t affected by that at all. The pieces at Nilufar were so visionary. Design should never be a matter of personal taste. This is exactly what a curator should do: to evolve and change the aesthetics.

It would definitely say that thank god I have a husband. I am so messy. I inherited that from my mother — she IS exactly like that. I leave piles, I forget things. I have this long corridor in my home — and I walk it maybe 200 times a day, as I always forget things on the other side. It often takes me 15 minutes to leave the house to collect everything I need, and I still forget things. (laughs)

I was crying so much when I was younger and lost things, but now I think “there’s another piece of me somewhere in the world”, and I like the idea.

So, well, if my furniture could talk, it would definitely make fun “of my funny corridor dance”.