2026

Natsuko Uchino is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in the South of France. Her practice combines agriculture and permaculture with artisanal and convivial production, engaging with manual craftsmanship, subsistence economies, and vernacular culture; she frequently collaborates with artists, local communities, and bearers of traditional knowledge. Her work takes shape through installations and performances that bring together sculptural materials, functional objects, and living matter. “Weaving Threads across Rippled Folds” evokes the layered nature of culture—exchanges and echoes intertwining like the threads of a fabric. Uchino engages in a dialogue with the artworks, furnishings, and decorative elements inhabiting Palazzo Chigi Zondadari, traversing the histories and traditions they embody. In this context, the works explore the capacity of materials and patterns to transmit cultural memory across diverse geographies and traditions, raising questions about landscape, perception, and the traversing of real and imaginary spaces. For this exhibition, Uchino has conceived a new body of site-specific works in close collaboration with local artisans from Siena and the surrounding villages, drawing upon manufacturing traditions and techniques—such as weaving, embroidery, and plaiting—using materials rooted in the local territory.