Gaia is a Rotterdam-based social designer, visual artist, and researcher originally from Milan, Italy. Her practice focuses on anthropogenic environments, contaminated landscapes, and pollution, exploring how human activities, production, and culture manifest in the material world. Gaia’s work involves collective experiences, multimedia installations, and performances that challenge the relationship between fiction, myths, and realities surrounding consumerism, standards, and exhaustion. Through material research and storytelling, she examines the interaction between environments, materials, and bodies to create tangible data and hybrid narratives that deepen the understanding of socio-environmental issues.

Group Exhibitions

Upcoming BIO 29 “Soft Fields”, Slovenia Bienal, MAO, Ljubljana (SL)
Upcoming Conflux festival: Tactics for Cultural Resistance, Rotterdam (NL)
2026 Radica Cultures of Change,  Masseria Minoia (IT)
2026 PADA58, Pada Gallery, Barreiro-Lisbon (PT)
2026 Design Signals: Chemical bonds, Bucharest (RO)
2026 Open Studios Borgerstraat Rotterdam (NL)
2026 What’s Left Speaks, Das Leben Am Haverkamp x Re-wire, Den haag (NL)
2025 Becoming Otherwise, Okey Space, Athens (GR)
2025 Design Signals: Chemical bonds, Faber, Timișoara (RO)
2025 WASTELAND’25, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam (NL)
2025 A Drifting Loop, Ortica Studio, Milan Design Week, Milan (IT)
2024 ITALY: A New Collective Landscape, Italian Pavilion, Shanghai Expo (CN)
2024 Runaway at DOPO?Space, Milan Design Week( IT)
2024 Keilewerf, Rotterdam Art Week (NL)
2024 ITALY: A New Collective Landscape, HKDI Gallery, Hong Kong (HK)
2023 Plan-B, Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven (NL)
2023 ReA! Art Fair, Fabbrica Del Vapore, Milan (IT)
2023 ITALY: A New CollectiveLandscape, ADI Design Museum, Milan (IT)
2022 DAE Graduation Show, Eindhoven (NL)
2021 Zero Hunger, Zero Power, Klokgebouw, Eindhoven (NL)
2021 Van  Abbemuseum at  Eindhoven Airport, (NL)



Residencies

2026 BIO29: Soft fields, Residency at Sečovlje Salina (SL)
2026 Pada, Art Residency & Gallery, Barreiro-Lisbon  (PT)
2025 Design Signals: Chemical bonds, Faber, Timișoara (RO)
2024 Marble Pyrgos , Art Residency, Tino island (GB)



Education

2020 - 2022 MA Social Design - Cum laude, DAE, Design Academy Eindhoven, Eindhoven (NL)
2016 - 2019 BA Product Design - Cum laude, NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan (IT)



Lectures - Workshops - Performance

2025 Performance at WASTELAND’25 opening event, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam (NL)
2024 Workshop “Under Water Creatures” Intro Week Master Department at Design Academy Eindhoven,NL)
2024  Workshop “Dreamweaving the Grottesque” with Matilde Patuelli at Onomatopee, Eindhoven (NL)
2024 Performance for “Spatial Tales of Unearthly Critters” at Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam (NL)
2024  Lecture “Talk and Tour” Design Academy Eindhoven, Master Social Design. (NL)
2023 External Examiner for “Marvellous Monsters” Studio by COOKIES, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, (NL)
2023 Future Materials Encounter: Pollution - Podcast for Material Future Bank, Eindhoven (NL)
2023 Lecture and Performance  for “Inizi Continui” Italian Cultural Institute, Amsterdam (NL)
2022  Lecture Design Academy Eindhoven, Master Social Design. Eindhoven (NL)
2022  Talk and performance “Story of Dust,”  DDW22, Microtuin (NL)



Other Experiences

2024 Fabrication, Hybrid Events Tegenlicht VPRO, Dutch Design Week, Microlab, Eindhoven (NL)
2024 “Narrative Native Dining” Series of dinner event in Collaboration with NOR,  Eindhoven (NL)
2024 “Meals from a salt burnt ground” with Studio Stolfa, Event at Verfris, Rotterdam (NL)
2023 Catalogue for Design Academy Eindhoven Graduation Show 2023 with WhyWhyNot (NL)
2023 Commissioned sculpture by Ginevra Gatti for the project AMNAS, Milan (IT)
2022-23 Fabrication, Odd Matter Studio, Fendi’s shops window, Rotterdam (NL)
2019 - 24 Producer and Curator at SO, Cultural assosiation and no-profit organisation, Milan (IT)



Grant

2026 Artisan Voucher, Mondriaan Fonds
2026 Culture Moves Europe, Creative Europe / Goethe-Institut
2025-26 Talent Development Grant, Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie
2025 Practical contribution, CBK Rotterdam
2024-25 PPO Grant x2
2024 Development Voucher, Mondriaan Fonds
2024 Design Starting Grant, Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie