Episode 10: Aurora Passero on textile art, heritage and atmosphere from Sicily to Norway
Artist Aurora Passero in the SARP Gallery, a former hazelnut factory at Linguaglossa, Mt Etna, Sicily
Ep 10: Aurora Passero on textile art, atmosphere and heritage from Sicily to Norway
Season 3 Sicily
In this episode of Art Destination Sicily, artist Aurora Passero joins us from her Oslo studio to reflect on her creative journey. Growing up in Norway, Aurora was immersed in textiles through her grandmother’s sewing and her mother’s costume design for film. Those early tactile encounters with wool, linen, velvet, and embroidery continue to shape her work today.
Aurora shares how her father’s Sicilian roots inspired her recent residency at SARP on Mount Etna, where she balanced family life with artistic deadlines. She describes weaving with nylon and local Sicilian wool, exploring the tension between synthetic and organic materials, and creating site-specific works that engage directly with space, atmosphere, and audience.
Through stories of travelling with her artist husband and children, Aurora reveals how family, process and place intertwine in her practice.
In this conversation, we explore how staging echoes her mother’s influence and how atmosphere itself becomes a narrative in art.
BIOGRAPHY
Aurora Passero ( b.1984) is an Italian- Norwegian artists that lives and works in Oslo, Norway. She studied at Glasgow School of Art and the Oslo Academy of Art, dep. of textile art, where she graduated in 2011.
Passero’s works, created using woven and dyed nylon, take the form of monumental installations that sit at the intersection of sculpture and painting. By giving central importance to the material and its intrinsic qualities, Passero draws inspiration from a broad range of cultural expressions — from popular and underground culture to craft traditions, ethnology, and art history — to create spatial compositions that explore the tensions and harmonies between material, space, form, and content.
Her recent solo exhibitions include: Drum Talk at Salgshallen; Woven Signals at Galleri Haaken; Solid Blossom at TSSK; Crystal Set at Galleri Haaken; Silvery Actions at the Vigeland Museum; Affections at Kunstnernes Hus; Liquid Territory at KRAFT; Ivory Tactics at Kunstnerforbundet; and Warrior Gloss at Galleri Soft.
Selected group exhibitions include: Ortigia Contemporanea in Syracuse; Ode to a Washcloth, Hymn to a Tiger at Kunsthall Stavanger and Kunstnerforbundet; NNA-NNA-NNA at Stavanger Art Museum and the Astrup Fearnley Museum; Europe, Europe at the Astrup Fearnley Museum; Tusen Tråder at Lillehammer Art Museum; the Norwegian Sculpture Biennale at the Vigeland Museum; 24 Spaces/1857 at Malmö Konsthall; and In Thread with Time at Haugar Vestfold Art Museum and the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art.
Passero has also completed numerous public art commissions, including for the Jotun headquarters in Sandefjord (2022), Danderyd Hospital in Stockholm (2020), and the Norwegian Embassy in Rome (2012).
In 2019, she completed her largest public commission to date: a site-specific tapestry for the new building of the Norwegian Parliament in Oslo.
In 2011, she was awarded the Fall Exhibition Prize for her monumental tapestry Fan Their Hearts, Inflame Them More, which is now on display at the new Oslo Central Library, Deichman Bjørvika.
