WHEN IN ROME
Elizabeth Lewis | Natalia Triantafylli | Nynke Koster | Elissa Lacoste | Anna Jožová
Curated by Angela da Silva
OPENING Thursday, June 12, 2025 | 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Palazzo Antonelli | Via di Monserrato, 34 | 00186 Rome

SWING Design Gallery is pleased to present When in Rome, the first cycle of an exhibition project curated by Angela da Silva, which places collectible works of contemporary art and design in dialogue with historic architectural containers in the city of Rome, a place of inspiration and a favored destination for generations of international artists since antiquity. This is the first time that the gallery, founded in 2011 by Angela da Silva, is engaging with the spaces of Palazzo Antonelli, an exceptional, hidden-away place in the heart of Baroque Rome. When in Rome exposes us to the work of some of the most sophisticated young creators on the collectible design scene, drawing an intimate map that dialogues with history, architecture, memory, and the nature of spaces. Old meets new as the materials, plant life, and scents of the site mix with new forms. The objects on display – vases, sculptures, lamps, mirrors, and chairs – are both functional and evocative, in symbiosis with their container. For one day, the history of Palazzo Antonelli, whose structure dates to the 16th century, will intertwine with the work of five young female designers who come from different backgrounds and places but have a common investigative and aesthetic approach that evokes archetypes and lost worlds.
Elizabeth Lewis (Born in Pokolbin, Australia in 1997. She lives and works in Rotterdam, the Netherlands). The Australian ceramicist makes vases and sculptures inspired by an aesthetic that blends mythology, architectural ruins, and the unknown. Her personal exploration of classical forms results in amphorae adorned with snakes and creatures that are not quite recognizable. Her collection Grotto invokes cosmic sensations of rediscovery and reminds us how little we can understand about reality when fairy tales, history, and lived experience intertwine. The exhibition features a selection of her works made over the last few years in her native Australia, during a residency in Denmark, and, most recently, in the Netherlands.
Natalia Triantafylli (Born in Athens in 1992. She lives and works in London, UK).
The Greek designer explores the tension between authenticity and standardization, often using clay. Her designs focus on the interplay of texture, form, and function, blurring the boundaries between industrial and artisanal aesthetics. She creates hybrid objects by combining ceramics with techniques like 3D printing and scanning. Her latest collection Chimeras and Hybrids is a fusion of handmade ceramics and their 3D-printed alter egos. She creates the digital parts of her work in a very practical way by modeling the forms in clay rather than 3D. Then she digitizes the clay forms using photogrammetry to create 3D models from images of the objects. She is currently a resident at the Sarabande Foundation, founded by the late Lee Alexander McQueen.
Nynke Koster (Born in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1986. She liives and works in The Hague).
Koster’s approach to recontextualization pervades her work, especially her Elements of Time collection. In this series, Nynke Koster transforms architectural remains into tangible, interactive art, blending historical solidity with the fluidity of the present. These functional objects are casts of architectural details of monumental buildings from different centuries. By juxtaposing them, Koster creates a dialogue between different eras, condensing time into a single coherent line. The cold, rigid forms of the architecture are softened by her use of colored rubber, creating an intense interaction between material and form. Koster’s work preserves the past while also giving it a place in the contemporary world, inviting us to interact with it in new, unexpected ways.
Elissa Lacoste (Born in Le Creusot, France in 1994. She lives and works in Burgundy, France).
The French experimental designer received her master’s degree from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2018. Her work stems from her fascination with the wild, the unexplained, and the sensory. With unconventional, vibrant textures, her sculptural works oscillate between the real and the surreal. Fascinated by what materials are capable of, she explores different techniques by experimenting intuitively rather than resorting to traditional craft knowledge. Her new Tinted Mirrors collection is a series of sculptural wall mirrors that blend reflective surfaces with textured mineral forms. Composed of recycled colored mirrored glass and composite materials like acrylic plaster, vermiculite, mica, and pigments, each frame evokes a geological fragment or organic crust. The mirrors’ vibrant hues distort and color the observer’s reflection, altering perception and introducing chromatic dissonance between subject and image. Surfaces suggest coral, mineral deposits, or industrial residues – a hybrid materiality that is both natural and artificial.
Anna Jožová (Born in Prague, Czech Republic, in 1996. She lives and works in Prague).
The artist-designer creates works of art in glass that also work as design objects. Anna Jožová’s Dysplasio collection reflects her recent focus on extinction, developmental irregularities, and abrupt changes in species evolution. The artist turns her attention once again to processes that are often perceived as negative but that she considers natural manifestations of life’s variable nature, essential upheavals within ecosystems. The forms of her works are inspired by the host/parasite relationship, an inseparable part of natural evolution. Each surface combines two contrasting treatments with one prevailing visually. Reliefs imprinted with organisms collide with smooth, transparent glass, creating a dynamic interplay between organic and synthetic, familiar and foreign. Her illuminated works similarly explore the fragile interplay between two coexisting entities in which harmony is either critical to survival or signals potential collapse.