Matete Martini (b. 1994, Friuli, Italy) is a multidisciplinary artist, creative director, photographer and video director working across painting, photography, sculpture, glass and installation. Her practice explores the relationship between objects, bodies and visual narratives, often moving between artistic research and commercial collaboration. She is the founder of Future Young Talent, an international workshop platform supporting experimental approaches to art, architecture and design. Her work has been presented in exhibitions, residencies and collaborations across Europe and worldwide.
1.Your work moves across different disciplines and forms of expression. What drives your creative journey at this stage of your career?
My work or better, my Practice is ironically called “Matetismo.”
Perhaps it is simply a way of gathering all the imaginaries that already exist behind the world. The name itself hides a small linguistic game: “ma tête” in French means my head. From there, somehow, it became Matete.
I was almost born with this inclination to work across different mediums. Even if my origin is in painting, my real education happened elsewhere in shops, in cafés, in the small theatres of everyday life. I grew up observing people: how they sit, how they dress, how they occupy space. A kind of photographic attention already existed in me when I was an adolescent.
This is what keeps me alive. In every historical moment the best or the worst and in every situation, I cannot stop creating. It is a voice inside. Through the act of doing, I try to discover something. Simply: just do it, as Nike says.
For this reason when I created the edition of InCf the magazine, La Pratica, where I was invited as editor-in-chief. The idea was to invite people to return to the practical act of making through the hands, the senses, and perception. Because practice, in the end, cures the soul and always brings solutions.
So it is not a career, and it is not a job. It is a practice, My practice.
Art residency porto Piccolo Sistiana, Trieste Summer 2025 x Biennale Donna edition 2026 ( opening biennale exhibition 27 march 2026)
Incf Magazine La pratica by Matete Martini launch Event Marsell Paradise Milano 2022
2.Many artists speak about storytelling as a central element of their practice. What kind of stories do you feel compelled to tell today?
The stories I feel compelled to tell often begin with people or with objects that belong to people.
For example, shoes. I love shoes because they carry you everywhere in the world, if you want. They define your mood, your attitude, your style every day. From a pair of shoes you can understand a lot about a person. In a way, they are like an identity card. But they are also something more: a craft. Someone invented them, someone shaped them, chose their form, their colors, the leather or the textile. They can be worn, abandoned, or rediscovered in an archive.
Since I was very young I have been observing people. A kind of photographic attention was already present in me when I was an adolescent. As an adult, this attention turned into different forms painting, photography, video, installation.
Through these mediums I try to bring humanity back into the image.
The stories I create are often intimate, sometimes almost theatrical. What interests me is always something very simple and very serious, the truth of inner stories. Art, for me, is a way to give form to these invisible narratives that live inside people but are rarely spoken.
Exhibition archive Baldinini Milan 2024
Exhibition archive Baldinini Berlin 2024
3.How do you see the relationship between your personal experiences and your artistic vision?
There is no real distance between life and artistic vision. Contemporary art is, in a way, the artist manifesting her or himself. There is no “between.” It is the same island, the same train we travel together. In the end, we are the same thing.
Recently I made a book with a large publishing house. It was an interesting exercise: to visually merge myself, my life, my adolescence where my research actually began and what people would call my “work life.” In reality, you cannot distinguish them.
The book is called Faits Divers_es. But the real point is very simple: to be. To be oneself essere se stessi, honestly.
Book Faits Divers_es
4.What does success mean to you as an artist, beyond exhibitions and recognition?
Being an artist and working with creativity for an entire life is a privilege, is the privilege.
My studio and some paintings Pordenone, inside the book Faits Divers_es
5. How would you describe your latest works?
I think one of my most significant projects not the latest one, but certainly one of the most complete and multifaceted was the work I did for Baldinini.
The project began with rediscovering the brand’s archive. I even filmed myself inside the archive, entering physically into that memory. From there I started photographing some of the shoes, which later became iconic images used in shops, showrooms and media.
It was a different way of looking back of exhibiting old shoes, leathers from the archive, and the stories contained within them. Not only the visible stories, but also the inner ones.Through this brand, which for some years became almost an unpredictable family, I had the chance to travel around Europe. It brought me happiness and a very healthy working environment.
In a way, it was a commercial project but at the same time deeply artistic and personal. For me, it remains a great and meaningful masterpiece.
Exhibition archive Baldinini Berlin 2024
Exhibition archive Baldinini Berlin 2024
Exhibition archive Baldinini Milan 2024
6. What are the biggest challenges you have met in your career?
I have never really looked at others. I have a kind of sacred trust in what I do. Of course, in the world you still have to prove that you can do it.
Trust is the real question. Trust in others, that is the challenge.
In the end, it is often just this: the right place, the right time. Creating itself is the natural part. The real difficulty is to continue with a total belief in the system around it.
Glass production Murano, Signoretto Lampadari, Glass week venice 2023
7. What about your next project?
Recently I heard some major designers saying that, in this difficult period the world is going through, being innovative or truly creative no longer makes sense.
I completely disagree. I deeply dislike when people behave as if they are finished before they have even truly begun to live.
I still have a lot to do.
I am currently part of an exhibition in Lugano within CENSURA, a new project by the Italian photographer Veronica Barbato at the Artphilein Foundation. I feel very honored to open this project with a deeply personal body of work that combines different mediums. The exhibition opens on May 30, 2026 at 11 AM and will remain open for more than a month.
At the same time, I continue working with my agency in Milan, presenting my commercial practice as a creative director and photographer.
I am also developing the second edition of the cultural festival Fuori dal Centro in my hometown, once again bringing together many guests and different voices.
I love building relationships with artist friends, exchanging ideas, and developing projects together. Some of them are still growing quietly, and I prefer not to announce them yet.
I am also finishing a project that acts as a bridge between industrial production and a social cooperative — something that can be worn because it produces garments, but also dignity. There is no limit to what creation can hold.
Artists have always been a light throughout history.
This is not the moment to stop, to complain, or to give up creating. On the contrary, it is the moment to reflect society and open a new book, to tell a new story.
Artists are the ones who can allow themselves not to be “stylish” or historically coherent.
We are the ones who can take risks.
Gesture collection sculptures 2021 – 2025 Ciment and stocking
Matete Martini_Portrait