My name is Marcella Virzi, a Brazilian-Portuguese designer of Italian descent, based in Lisbon, Portugal.
In the mid-nineties, while studying, I began a clothing label. At that time, embroidery was everywhere in Rio.
Each Carnaval brought thousands of elaborate costumes into the streets and, with them, a world that fascinated me, where women appeared powerful, sensual and free and social codes temporarily loosened.
I quickly became absorbed by it and built a team of women whose skill, patience and precision became central to my world. From the outside, it could all seem frivolous, but I felt something powerful running through it.
A dress could take months to complete. That kind of devotion changed my perception of what luxury could be.
And I was attracted to it. As I grew more experienced, I realised that what interested me most was hidden in the structure of the ornament itself. That was where I began exploring ideas that would become central to my work.
Ornament became less a surface treatment than a way of thinking through construction, tension and rhythm.
Creating has always felt like an act of faith. Something would surface in my thoughts, something I could not name, coming into focus through study, observation, reading and especially through the work itself, as if I were trying to recover something that had once existed and been completely forgotten. Something subjective that I wanted to give form to.
It became a very particular pursuit, and I began to need more physical space to follow it.
My first jewellery collection came out in 2012. The process of moving from fabrics, beads and needles to casting, silversmithing, metal stakes and shaping tools gave me new life. I was in awe of this encounter between ancient techniques, modern machinery and craftsmanship. That combination gave me a way to test so many ideas,
and my imagination expanded with it.
I was already drawn to cultures and philosophies with a strong connection to the spiritual world, and to the way their art, architecture and design carried those rituals and beliefs. Egyptian, Roman, Mesoamerican and West African references were omnipresent in my vocabulary. They challenged me to find ways for those references to coexist
with the contemporary world. Soon, my first homeware collection took shape.
It took me another decade, and a move to Europe, to experiment with my knowledge and references
as material for transformation, taking the work from the scale of the body and the object to the scale of the room.
I keep returning to Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, reading and reconsidering ideas that continue to find expression in what I make. My little obsessions keep returning too. I often find myself circling the same questions.
Repetition becomes not only a persistent impulse, as forms and symbols recur within and across my designs,
but a way to look for answers as I test, shift and refine them until difference emerges.
I must admit, I aspire to create objects whose beauty and meaning endure. I want them to be collected and looked at,
to adorn and bring pleasure, and if I do my work right, I hope they will be passed on to future generations.
My series, shown here in DESIGNS, carry all of this with them. Thirty years of research, study and experimentation.
Success and many frustrations.
Somewhere along the way, the process brought into being my own sense of refinement. One that I came to realise was also shaped by my enduring affinity with Surrealism. There has always been a surreal gesture in the way I see life. Something between the hard-working woman I am every day and the deeper parts of me. In a perpetual state where everything feels simultaneously familiar yet deeply, deeply strange.
A rebellious streak always finds its way into the things I create. All of it clashes, and I think that clash is my signature.
However much rigour, ornament or drama a piece may carry, there is always room for my references to play,
and for a sense of humour, maybe a little subversive, that invites anyone to find their way in.
