Filippo Muzi Falconi’s World Is Filled With Wonder, Naturally

You spent much of your childhood at your father’s farm in Liguria. Is that where your interest in nature and making began?

I think so. My brother and I would spend our summers there, building bows and arrows, collecting bugs and generally exploring. It felt very liberating. Back in London, I watched lots of David Attenborough documentaries and became interested in animals and biology. As I grew older, that developed into reading about botany, evolution and different ways of understanding the natural world.

In a way, my practice is about trying to return to who I was as a child. Life adds all these layers of expectation, and you gradually have to peel them away again. When I was six, I already knew what interested me; I just didn’t question whether it was childish or useful. I liked prehistoric objects, animals and making things, and I still do.

Your work seeks to “re-enchant” our understanding of the natural world. What does that mean to you?

We like the reassurance of believing that everything has been explored and understood, but that isn’t true. We’re constantly discovering new things about the complexity of ecosystems and realising how limited our knowledge is.

Historically, we have placed humans at the centre of the world. Nature was first seen as a gift created for us, then, following industrialisation, as a resource to manufacture and transform. I would like to contribute to a different view: one that acknowledges mystery and encourages reverence for what we don’t understand. We are part of something much larger, but we are not at its centre.

How does spirituality enter into that?

My mother’s side of the family is quite Catholic. My mum still hides little images of the Virgin Mary in my clothes and suitcases without telling me. I never completely connected with Catholicism, but its presence stayed with me.

I became interested in animistic beliefs because they provided a meeting point between that religious influence and my interest in nature. There is something spiritual in accepting that the world exceeds our understanding. I’m also drawn to sacred objects, shrines, and folktales, not necessarily as expressions of a particular religion, but as ways of giving form to mystery.

You began by making functional objects. What led you towards sculpture?

As a teenager, I made lamps and tables because I enjoyed working with my hands. Later, I spent several summers as a workshop assistant at Domaine de Boisbuchet, the design and architecture centre in France. Being surrounded by designers and makers showed me that something I had treated as an individual pursuit could become a practice.

The turning point came when I met Yoshin Ogata, a Japanese sculptor living near Carrara. I showed him my furniture and drawings, and he asked whether I had ever made anything that wasn’t functional. I hadn’t. Removing that constraint was liberating: suddenly I could bring together making with my interests in biology, evolution and spirituality.

Your materials are often gathered directly from the landscape. Why is foraging important?

Making gives me an excuse to go out into the world: to find materials, work outside and become more attentive to a place. I might begin with a fallen log, wild clay, natural pigment, a shell, a seed or even a shark egg case. Sometimes I keep an object for years before understanding what it might become.

The material and the idea need to be coherent. If the work is about our relationship with nature, it makes sense to begin with materials I have encountered myself. You have to respond to what is already there rather than imposing a completely predetermined form upon it.

Several works resemble shrines or archaic artefacts. What draws you to those forms?

I’m interested in the way earlier cultures used objects to connect human life with wider natural cycles. Ancient fertility figures, for instance, weren’t only about human reproduction; they could also celebrate spring, seeds and the fertility of the land.

Portal of Seedlings transforms a fireplace no longer used for its original purpose into a shrine for strange-looking seeds collected by my sister-in-law, Margherita Zompa. It reimagines the anthropocentric nativity scene as a celebration of life in many forms. (It will be exhibited at Unlocked Shoreditch from 15–17 September as part of the Wood Awards presentation at Material Matters during London Design Festival.)

Other sculptures borrow from altars, masks and votive objects without belonging to a specific religion. In one recent sculpture, I created a small, womb-like interior, with details that only become visible when you move closer.

You now divide your practice between London and Italy. What does each place allow you to do?

Italy is where I can work more roughly and experimentally. I can take a log, forage clay or use the wood-fired kiln I built at the farm. London offers greater precision and access to workshops, so it lends itself more naturally to furniture and collectable design. One is wild and instinctive; the other is ordered and controlled. My work needs both.

Is that desire for experimentation also behind Apua, the residency you run at the farm?

Yes. I wanted to recreate something of the collective energy I experienced at Boisbuchet. Apua brings a small group of artists together for two weeks to explore the area, gather materials and make work collaboratively.

Each edition responds to something specific in the landscape. The first looked at ancient dry-stone structures that may once have been tombs or shelters. The second focused on the area’s geology: we explored caves with a geologist, collected clay and created work that drew attention to this particular environment.

For me, a sculpture almost dies once it is finished. What matters most is the exploration: the relationship you form with a material, a landscape or another person through the process of making. Apua creates more space for that moment, allowing the curiosity and freedom I experienced here as a child to become something shared.