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Brooklyn-based artist Lucia Gallipoli makes confessional textile works for the sentimental, the soft-hearted, and anyone who has ever treated memory like something sacred. Working across soft sculpture, tapestry, diaristic writing, iPhone photography, and personal ephemera, Gallipoli builds a world where discarded objects are given new emotional lives, and where tenderness becomes both material and method.
Often using secondhand fabrics and forgotten fragments, her practice contrasts gentle, domestic materials with feelings that are much harder to hold: longing, devotion, vulnerability, obsession, embarrassment, love. Her works feel like private shrines to the minutiae of everyday life — camera-roll relics, diary-like confessions, scraps of fabric, and the emotional debris we usually leave behind.
Existing somewhere between the online world and a self-made fantasy realm “where everything is soft,” Gallipoli approaches art as a form of preservation and transformation. She is, as she puts it, “primarily a historian of my own minutiae,” turning personal details into objects that feel tender, strange, funny, and deeply sincere. At the centre of it all is a practice devoted to softness, not as weakness, but as a way of surviving, remembering, and loving the world back.
Hi Lucia! It’s a pleasure to sit down with you! First question that I always ask. How does a regular day look like for you in Brooklyn?
Lucia: I wake up around 8am and go to bed around 11pm 365 days a year, except for New Year’s Eve, when I go to bed at 12:30am. After my day starts, famously around 8am, I eat whatever my current hyper fixation breakfast is (and yes, make a loose approximation of a matcha latte, albeit with way less milk!) Low key Patrick Bateman energy in the sense that my morning routine is long and annoying and the same every day. I have a part-time job, but when I’m not there, I like to be at my studio most days for at least a few hours. And on a good month, I basically live at the post office.
I’m curious, growing up, what was life like there? And what kind of kid were you? What did you enjoy doing?
Lucia: On the arts-to-sports spectrum of high school movies from the 2000s, I certainly leaned heavily to the arts. I walked the mile, for example. As an adult, I work out and am grateful for my body and what it can do, but when I was told to “hustle” in my mandatory middle school soccer practice… Like, why, and then what?
Do you remember approximately at what age your creative side started to show? And when did you start taking being an artist seriously?
Lucia: I only started to take being an artist seriously after I graduated from NYU with a minor in Studio Art. I would interpret “seriously” to mean creating everything with intention. My intention, in particular, is to express an innate version of how I feel and explore the larger conceptual issues that relate to that feeling, I guess.
Ok Lucia, with these next series of questions, I will try to delve into your work as best as possible. So…You’ve mentioned the idea that you exist both online and in a fantasy world “where everything is soft.” What does that fantasy world look like to you, and when did you first realize you were living partly inside it?
Lucia: I would say I have, even as an adult, an overly active imagination, and sometimes interpret reality very generously. For example, I (28F) was upstate with my boyfriend (32M) last fall and saw I giant (truly giant, by the way) sign that said PUMPKIN (I love autumn!) in the lawn next to our airBnB. But the sign actually said TRUMP… A few months later, the lighting on our street in Brooklyn was spotty one night when we were heading to the subway. I thought I saw a baby eggplant (in the same way that sometimes your fried rice has baby corn, you know?) My boyfriend warned me to watch where I was walking because someone had clearly not picked up after their dog. I sometimes just don’t question things because my mind is elsewhere. Sue me for imagining a better world!
You describe yourself as “primarily a historian of my own minutiae.” What kinds of small, private details feel important enough for you to preserve?
Lucia: Things that make me feel strongly, but also, even things that don’t. Things that feel unique to my experience, and things that feel universal.
There is a beautiful contradiction in your work between softness and emotional intensity. Do you see softness as comfort, seduction, something else?
Lucia: Softness, materially and metaphorically, is a form of comfort to me. Not quite seduction, but something to reference and subvert through intensity and discomfort. That being said, I feel shocked when people actually take issue with my work. I feel like I’m not being radical, truly at all, political or otherwise, because I’m just stating how I feel. Then people leave comments on my posts that my work is “satanic.” Is the bar for being radical really so low?
Your art feels very intimate, but also very aware of display and performance. How do you decide what parts of yourself become visible in the work, and what remains private?
Lucia: I am willing to share basically anything about myself and indeed sometimes I do, but some details wouldn’t add to my work. For example, I made a soft sculpture bible of my lore in 2025, featuring images of digital and physical ephemera I collected from ages 18-27. The ephemera in question included diary entries and screenshots from my finsta, i.e. my fake-Instagram that I used as my diary for many years. I was sharing what I was going through, and what I was going through at 19 was being dangerously depressed on my gap year and having weird, overly complicated sexual encounters which, believe me, I was letting my close friends know about on my finsta! In making my lore bible soft sculpture, I edited out the gratuitous ephemera in lieu of what I felt were more mundane hints at what I was actually going through. I feel like the point of my lore bible is treating the teachings of everyday life with the significance that people give the actual bible.
You make what you call “tender-hearted girl art.” What does that phrase mean to you, and do you feel it resists the way sentimentality is often dismissed or belittled?
Lucia: I love love love to lean into how sentimentality is often dismissed and belittled. You don’t like sentimentality? Let me spend a month making a sculpture or giant tapestry about it using secondhand materials that I sourced slowly over years while I let this memory bounce around in my brain!
You studied a self-directed BA in Love at NYU. That sounds almost like the perfect origin story for your practice. What did “studying love” mean in reality, and how did it shape the way you make art now?
Lucia: I designed my own major at NYU’s Gallatin, which is a meme, and the judgment is sort of fair from afar. Honestly though, I basically just got a normal liberal arts degree with emphasis on classes that centered around sexuality and love. I took a social work class on love and relationships, but also took a child and mental health class called Love Actually, and a class on the art history of Aphrodite and female nude sculptures. I took classes across different departments and schools within NYU and it was so fun! I love reading theory… and TL;DR my BA has certainly informed themes in my practice, particularly directly after undergrad.
Do you think your work comes from longing? And if so, longing for what?
Lucia: Of course it does and I hope you can tell. I’m not sure what I’m longing for, ultimately speaking. Someone tell me?
When you call the work confessional, what does confession give you that ordinary explanation cannot?
Lucia: I feel like I need to intellectualize and stylize my inner monologue to be quippy in order to be taken seriously. I could be like, “I can’t believe I basically worshipped some guy who didn’t care if I lived or died who looked exactly like me—and I’m not god!” or I could make a tapestry that reads, I Used to Pray, but god wouldn’t be 5’8″.
Your work has a lot of emotional nakedness, but it is also funny and self-aware. How important is humor in protecting the sincerity of the work?
Lucia: Thank you, those are so my goals. I hope my humor adds a layer of absurdity to the work and underscores the intensity and earnestness of my emotions, rather than obscuring my feelings.
You often use secondhand fabric and discarded objects. What do you look for when choosing your materials?
Lucia: Anything I find beautiful! The beauty could be in the simplicity of a natural undyed fiber or the obvious age of a garish vintage floral print.
Textile has such a domestic, bodily, intimate history. What does fabric allow you to say that painting, photography, or writing alone would not?
Lucia: People have such a strong pre-existing association with certain prints—at least I do. I like curating fabric when making my work in order to play with what people normally associate certain patterns and textures with. Also, admittedly, collecting and owning fabric brings me visceral joy that borders on true euphoria.
When you rescue discarded fabrics, do you feel there is an ethical dimension to that gesture, or is it more emotional and intuitive?
Lucia: I would say both, in that it feels good to give something a new life, knowing that it’s lived a life before I’ve encountered it, and in that it could otherwise end up in a landfill.
You say you exist online as well as in your fantasy world. Do those spaces feel separate to you, or has the internet become part of the fantasy?
Lucia: The internet is real to me… But so is my fantasy world.
How do you relate to the aesthetics of online girlhood: Tumblr, screenshots, camera rolls, Notes app fragments, saved images, without letting them become purely nostalgic?
Lucia: I’m trying to figure that out. I often find myself taking a picture of trash on the ground that feels like a personal metaphor somehow and thinking about how I’ll be going through my camera roll in a year and longing to see beauty like this again. Girl, you’re literally seeing it now!
There is something very contemporary in the way your work treats digital traces as emotionally sacred. Do you think our phones now hold the kinds of relics people once kept in boxes, or diaries?
Lucia: I have every iPhone I’ve ever had, dating back to my iPhone 3. There is, and I’m saying this genuinely, something so sacred to me about holding my phone from when I was 13. They might be somewhat obsolete now but they’ll be significant forever.
Do you ever feel tension between making deeply personal work and showing it in a culture where intimacy is constantly consumed online?
Lucia: Not really. In some ways I wish the confessional was more of an original concept but realistically it has almost certainly reduced the friction I face when sharing my work because people are so used to it.
Your recent exhibition titles: “How Do You Pray?” And “How to Be A Good Lover, Dolls Don’t Cry”, all feel like small emotional commandments. How important are titles in building the world of the work?
Lucia: Some of my titles have added meaning and sometimes I feel like the work itself already says what I wanted it to say—literally. It’s easy for me to be lazy with titles because my work already has so much text. I’m trying to be more intentional with my titling, though.
What does prayer mean to you in relation to making art?
Lucia: My work is a prayer in that I’m begging for anyone to understand some specific aspect of my brain.
Your work seems to take “girlhood” seriously without making it innocent or simple. What do you think people misunderstand about girlhood as an emotional or aesthetic territory?
Lucia: It’s just so complicated and girls are so complicated! People dismiss the turbulence of teen girlhood but I will never feel a stronger emotion again, and I’m sure many other former-teen-girls feel the same, and feelings are often facts, famously, to me.
Sentimentality is often treated as unserious, especially when connected to femininity. Do you feel your work is defending sentimentality?
Lucia: Ride or die for sentimentality. 10000000000000000%!
Can you walk me through your creative process from beginning to end result?
Lucia: I would love to have an answer for this, because I would love to never feel a creative block ever again. Every idea with any level of merit that I’ve ever had is a blip on a timeline wherein I have no ideas.
Can you also tell me about your use of symbolism?
Lucia: I feel like the symbolism in my work is fairly straightforward because I want to make work that people understand. In my piece, What if God Worships Me Instead???, a hand holding a glittery fabric fairy wand is a stand in for some sort of divine power over god, for example.
How do you approach color?
Lucia: I need to approach color… Right now color is often approaching me in the form of thrifted fabric.
So with what we just talked about, what are you hoping to convey?
Lucia: I want to make work that represents my disposition in hopes that others will connect with it and feel seen and comforted by it as well.
Ok Lucia, now to something totally different. In a parallel universe who would you be? and what would you be doing?
Lucia: In a parallel universe, I hope I realize how beautiful my life is earlier than I did (which is to say, before the age of about 24). Alternatively and diametrically opposed to the aforementioned parallel universe, I am unmedicated and feeling everything dialed up to a million percent and am a total mess but am in some ways free. I hope I’m making art in both universes.
Outside of art, what’s something you’re obsessed with right now, maybe a hobby, a show, or even a food—that keeps you grounded or inspired?
Lucia: I’m really inspired by girly gorp-core right now. Pockets on everything, minimal color palette, practicality, with elevated but subtle girly touches. I keep noticing it seep into my art style, although I don’t know if anyone else would.
Can you tell me a story about a time when a connection with someone had a big impact on you?
Lucia: I have let so many truly random people ruin my life in a way that was ultimately fundamental to my development. And, of course, I still love everyone I’ve ever loved.
What qualities do you find most important in the people you choose to spend time with?
Lucia: Whether or not they make me feel comfortable is huge. My closest friendships are almost always an immediate spark, like when you meet at a party and feel like you could tell them anything and then you do. Almost all of my friends who I regularly hang out with have been my friends for years. I met my best friend in 2001 in pre-school, for example. Sometimes I think someone seems way cooler than me and wish I could gain their approval, but then I realize that I think they’re cooler than me just because they’re cold and particular (i.e. clout chasing) about who they hang out with. It’s childish of them and it’s childish of me for even thinking to care. I wrote a poem about this a while back, but no one I’ve ever loved yields results when Googled.
Anybody you look up to?
Lucia: Too many people to name. I have so much to learn!
What motivates you?
Lucia: The fear of dying having never really been known. And joy!
How would you describe a perfect day?
Lucia: I have nowhere to be, but I end up in my studio for hours. My bobbin never runs out of thread, etc.
Alright Lucia, I always ask these two questions at the end of an interview. The first is. What’s your favorite movie(s) and why?
Lucia: I don’t have a favorite, but I’ve seen all of the Twilight movies at least 5 times each, and I’ve seen the first one easily 15 times.
The second is. What song(s) are you currently listening to the most right now?
Lucia: Heaven is No Feeling by Cate Le Bon. It only came out a year ago and Spotify recently informed me that it’s already my most played song, and I have had an account since 2013. For anyone wondering, I’ve listened to it well over 600 times. Lyrically and sonically perfect!