The scrappy chic of arte povera

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Paris’s Bourse de Commerce, now home to the Pinault art collection, has welcomed many grand visitors over the centuries – but from last month, the glass and metal dome has been playing host to more humble constituents with its Arte Povera exhibition. Mattresses, twigs, foam and rags: these are materials that the revolutionary 20th-century Italian movement used to fête the creativity and resilience of ordinary people, and the value of simplicity. It’s a seemingly resurgent philosophy.

At the Guggenheim in New York, By Way Of: Material and Motion (until 12 January 2025) showcases a suite of arte povera works pulled from the museum’s permanent collection. In May, Giuseppe Penone, a key figure of the arte povera movement, inaugurated his new permanent installation, The Inner Flow of Life, in the Royal Djugården in Stockholm, having been elected Sweden’s artist of the year for 2024. From last month, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti in Verona has been exploring the opus of Mario Merz, an arte povera artist whose use of unconventional materials – including his own body – creates a dialogue between humans and the natural world.

Fragments are always speaking to me

On the runway, designers have also been mining the richness of reality. At the Balenciaga AW24 haute couture show, a column gown was sculpted from melted shopping bags, leaving traces of the occasional barcode. Marine Serre’s signature fork-head earrings were accompanied by branded grocery carts and upcycled key-fob necklaces for her AW24 collection, and Séan McGirr incorporated laser-cut crystal fragments inspired by smashed phone screens into his Alexander McQueen collection. Jonathan Anderson showed knitwear depicting worn façades at JW Anderson for SS25 menswear, while in the same season Prada showed a “lived-in” collection inspired by hand-me-downs, Undercover proposed grocery bags stuffed with produce, and Parisian maroquinerie label Domestique (by Hermès Petit H alum Bastien Beny) featured weighing scale sticker keychains to check it all out with. At the Moschino resort 2025 women’s collection, creative director Adrian Appiolaza showed boiled-egg earrings and a paperclip bodice. 

“Fragments – forgotten, discarded, disrespected, thrown away – are always speaking to me,” fashion designer-turned-artist Martin Margiela said last year of his art; it’s in line with his clothes designs, which have included a broken plate vest and wine-cork necklace.

Arte Povera, meaning “poor art”, emerged in post-second-world-war Italy in reaction to the increasing economic disparity between the rapidly industrialising north and the agricultural south. The movement rejected the overintellectualisaton of high art and embraced ordinary, “poor” materials as a critique of consumerism and a reflection of societal realities. Its anti‑establishment ethos resonates in the face of similar economic uncertainties and breakneck technological advancements today.

“I believe the resurgence is also a reaction to the very complicated overdose of digital information, and the fact that digital technology is very opaque to most of us,” says Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the curator of the exhibition at the Bourse de Commerce and former museum director of Castello di Rivoli, one of the largest collections of arte povera in the world. “As this opaqueness increases with AI, it makes people to want to get back to basics and essentials.”

“There’s something about displaying humility to a certain extent that seems to be in the air,” agrees Guggenheim deputy director and Jennifer and David Stockman chief curator Naomi Beckwith, who oversaw the By Way Of exhibition. “I do think one of the best things artists can do is shift perception on things that feel quotidian or everyday, and value something that has not been valued.” 

This homage to the everyday has been part of Dutch-Caribbean brand Botter since the start. Its co-founders, Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh, born in Curaçao and Amsterdam respectively, reinterpret objects such as fishnets, fruit stickers and discarded bike saddles in their collections.

“In the Caribbean, people don’t have a lot, but the way they dress with almost nothing and turn it into something, there’s a pride in this creativity,” says Botter. Adds Herrebrugh: “You get indoctrinated into newness, the idea that everything needs to be so polished and perfectly finished, and sometimes things can become really flat… For us, it’s about creating the second layer not only in material, surface and texture, but in meaning – how does it spark your imagination?”

Canadian multidisciplinary artist and designer Gab Bois transforms credit cards into bodice panelling, croissants into high heels, cigarettes into skirts, and orange skins into brassieres, as worn by Belgian singer Angèle for a recent magazine cover shoot. “My fascination with everyday objects, from rocks to fruit stands, is not materialistic but a source of admiration,” Bois explains. “I try to pay homage to these things, subverting them, transforming them into something new. The familiarity and relatability of the subjects, bridged with a surprising context, seems to satisfy people.”

The Italian word povero doesn’t simply mean “poor” in the sense of not having an adequate amount of money to live a joyful and full life, says Christov-Bakargiev. “Povero has many connotations, and one of the main ones is of the simple, the essential, the elemental.” There’s a sense of resourcefulness, ingenuity and a certain dignity in the face of adversity. “I want people to leave the exhibition feeling that you can see life in the smallest things,” she says. “That you’re alive.”