The moment you have been waiting for has arrived: we are ready to launch the open call for Italian-speaking CURATORS under 36 for TEXTILE ART FACTORY!

If you adore contemporary textile art, if you want to take part in a 6-month training residency in the heart of the textile district: with formal and non-formal training, practical and theoretical lessons, studio and factory visits, workshops, talks, one-on-one mentoring, and the preparation of a final exhibition and catalogue this is your once-in-a-lifetime chance.

All residents will be hosted in our shared apartment, will have a working space in our studio, and will have full access to our textile lab. Each participant will receive a monthly stipend of 500 euros.

You are: a curator or aspiring curator; under 36; Italian-speaking (minimum level B1 to understand the lessons); not in formal education; and not employed full-time. DO NOT miss this opportunity!

The call will be open for 30 days starting today, and the selected curator will be chosen just in time to participate in the selection of the participating artists.
More info here

Textile Art Factory is a project by Lottozero, Museo del Tessuto e SC17, funded by the Regional Programme FSE+ Tuscany 2021–2027, under the Public Notice approved by D.D. n. 138/2024, and part of Giovanisì, the Tuscany Region’s initiative for youth autonomy.

For Clara: Shortcut on an extended plane (SOCKS), 2025, dye sublimation print on synthetic fabric. Printed at Institute for Electronic Arts, Alfred University while an Artist-in-Residence.

Jennifer Schmidt is a multi-disciplinary artist living in Brooklyn, NY, who works with print media, graphic design, textiles, writing, and sound to create site-responsive installations, video, and performances that question the role of visual iconography and repetitive actions within a given environment.

During her 3-week residency at Lottozero, Schmidt is experimenting with digital embroidery and reactive dye screenprinting on found woven textile samples produced in Italy. Responding to their existing patterns, color variations, and accidental dye marks, she layers new imagery and adjusts her digital files through machine drawing and printing processes. This work is part of her ongoing research project For Clara: Shortcut on an Extended Plane, which reflects on her identity as a woman artist working across graphics and textiles, while tracing a conceptual connection to Clara Posnanski — an early 20th-century designer and printer associated with the Wiener Werkstätte whose life and work remain largely undocumented.

Jennifer Schmidt received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Bachelor of Arts degrees in Studio Art and Art History from the University of Delaware.
She is Professor of the Practice in Print at SMFA at Tufts University in Boston, MA.

We are excited to announce the third exhibition of our Soft Sculpture biennial program, with a solo show by Barbara Prenka, a Kosovo-born artist active between Bolzano and Berlin.

What Lies Behind the Boundaries of a Shadow extends her ongoing reflection on the blanket—an object that inhabits our daily lives and, in moments of crisis or social fragility, embodies care and shelter.
By recreating it from scratch—padding and hand-sewing shiny fabrics printed with abstract patterns—the artist turns the blanket into a terrain of imagination and material experiment. This artificial, abstract landscape unfolds as a tridimensional surface, where word and matter intertwine through embroidered texts.

Developed during her residency at Lottozero, the new series brings language into the work as a physical presence, inscribed in the fabric. The narrative, never linear nor fixed, settles within folds and reliefs, evoking inner images and subjective associations.
Emerging from a practice on the threshold between painting and sculpture, the blanket here shifts toward a sculptural dimension: the fold and the inertia of the padded fabric define new relations with space, architecture, and the identity of the site.
The exhibition takes form as a site-specific installation, activated by a sound composition by Alessandra Novaga, in which the blankets turn emptiness into a tangible presence. In this continuum, sound and silence, image and word merge until they coincide.

This project is the third chapter in Lottozero’s biennial program dedicated to Soft Sculpture, exploring the expressive and conceptual potential of soft and flexible materials within contemporary art.
The exhibition is co-funded by Toscanaincontemporanea 2025 and by the Province of South Tyrol - Department of Culture.

Opening: November 20, h 18.30
From 21.11.2025 to 15.02.2026
Mon-Fri 10.00-18.00; Sat and Sun by appointment
info@lottozero.org / Tel 0574 22883

In celebration of Female Entrepreneurship Day on November 19, join us online for a special event with Tessa and Arianna Moroder, founders of Lottozero.

Discover the story of how Lottozero began and learn how female entrepreneurship is shaping a more sustainable textile future. This interactive session is your chance to meet the founders, ask questions, and gain insights into building a creative and resilient business.

You’ll also get an exclusive first look at the W4TEX Project an Erasmus+ initiative empowering women to strengthen their management and leadership competencies through the Be a Manager online course and Women Think Green toolkit — resources designed to help women grow as confident, capable leaders.

November 19 | Online Event
Register here!

Born in Slovenia and now based in Glasgow, Anita Sarkezi is an artist and weaver of Slovene, Croatian, Hungarian, and Romani descent. She studied Fine Arts at KASK & Conservatorium in Ghent and Textile Design (Weave) at the Glasgow School of Art, where she is currently Artist in Residence (2023–2025).

Rooted in her own experience as a migrant artist in a post-Brexit era, Anita’s practice explores ideas of movement, belonging, and cultural hybridity. Working between weaving and graphic experimentation, she investigates the translation between digital and analogue processes and the political and symbolic dimensions of ornament, deconstructing traditional motifs, meanings, and decorative functions to create a new visual language.

During her residency, she continues to develop her series On The Fringes, a body of woven works on the TC2 digital jacquard loom that reimagine historical maps of her native Slovenia—situated at the crossroads of Austria, Croatia, and Hungary. Through these tactile compositions, Anita reflects on the fluidity of borders and proposes a more inclusive way of envisioning territory and identity.

Anita Sarkezi’s residency is supported by The Textile Society.

Anita Sarkezi, Invasion No.2, from the series The Fringes, 2025, Jacquard woven tapestry, 58 x 63 cm.

Shanzhai Lyric, “Incomplete Poem (hedge)”, for the group show “The Weight of Words”, Henry Moore Foundation, UK, 2023

Shanzhai Lyric is a poetic inquiry and archive run by artists Ming Lin and Alex Tatarsky, focusing on radical logistics and linguistics through the prism of technological aberration and nonofficial cultures.

The project takes inspiration from the experimental English of shanzhai t-shirts made in China and proliferating across the globe to examine how the language of counterfeit uses mimicry, hybridity, and permutation to both revel in and reveal the artifice of global hierarchies. Through an ever-growing archive of poetry-garments, Shanzhai Lyric explores the potential of mis-translation and nonsense as utopian world-making (breaking) and has previously taken the form of poetry-lecture, essay, and installation.

During their week-long residency at Lottozero, Ming Lin and Alex Tatarsky explored the local concept of “rossino,” connecting it to their ongoing research on rag recycling and regeneration across Prato, New York, and the English tradition of “shoddy.”

We’re thrilled to announce that Lottozero is once again hosting a young entrepreneur through the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs Programme!

Lottozero,  continues its commitment to supporting new creative talent in textiles, fashion, and design.

This year, we’ve decided to take a more focused approach. In order for the Erasmus programme to be truly successful, we believe it’s essential to be clear about what kind of experience we can offer and what kind of entrepreneur can make the most of it. That’s why we’ve created a specific profile for the candidate we’d love to host: someone hands-on, curious, and deeply passionate about textiles, materials, and design processes, who’s ready to learn the entrepreneurial side of running a creative lab.

The selected participant will work closely with our Lab Manager inside the Lottozero Textile Lab, engaging daily with machinery, materials, and production workflows, while gaining first-hand insight into creative research, collaboration, and studio management.

Please note: this opportunity is open to participants who are eligible for the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme. Please check eligibility here: erasmus-entrepreneurs.eu/page.php?cid=2

If this sounds like you, please fill out this Google Form.

 This form is designed to help us get to know you better — your background, motivation, and interest in joining Lottozero. The information you share will help us understand whether your profile aligns with the kind of experience we can offer in our textile laboratory and creative community. Please note that the form can be submitted until the 22nd of November.

Please note that the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs funding and eligibility process is handled separately by the program’s national contact points in each country. Each applicant should check their own eligibility and apply for funding through their local organization.

Nadia Tamanini, Esercizi di rinnovata scrittura - imparaticcio #0: potenza palindroma, 2023, cross-stitch on Aida fabric, mirrors, 18X18X18 cm

Nadia Tamanini (b. 1987, Trento) is a multidisciplinary artist working across visual poetry, installation, and performance. Through her practice, words, images, and materials become tools for dialogue — between individuals and communities, adulthood and childhood.
She explores language as material, transforming words into images, sounds, and gestures in dialogue with space, where text takes on tangible, sculptural form shaped by her belief in relation, intersection, and biodiversity.

During her month-long residency at Lottozero (till the end of October), she will continue her research on visual poetry, experimenting with new textile techniques such as jacquard weaving, digital embroidery, and knitwear.

Her work, often site-specific, has been presented in Italy since 2011 in solo and group exhibitions, festivals, illustrated books and poetry publications, and especially within curatorial projects for museums, community spaces, and private collections.

For the magazine Arte Trentina, she is the author of original poems for the poetry column L’occhio attraverso (“The Eye Through”). Her work is part of the permanent collection of MUSEION – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Bolzano Bozen.

Next Friday marks the final day to experience Liselore Frowijn’s exhibition Every Month I Weave at Lottozero.

A project we hold very close to our hearts, Every Month I Weave explores the history and politics of textile labor, the female body, and invisible work — themes deeply intertwined with the city of Prato and its rich textile heritage. 
Inspired by the historical figure of Margherita Datini, the exhibition weaves together archival research, contemporary textile practice, and feminist reflection, offering a poetic and critical lens on the ways women’s labor has been essential yet often erased from social and economic narratives.

Finissage: Friday, October 24th, 18:00 – 20:30 at Lottozero

“Stitching the Poetry” (2022–ongoing) is a communal embroidery workshop initiated by the artist duo Handwork — Dileta Deikė and Jelena Škulis.

First conceived in the spring of 2022, as war broke out in Ukraine, the project invited the local community in Vilnius to embroider a poem by Ukrainian poet Halyna Kruk—written amidst the devastation of Hostomel, Bucha, Irpin, Kharkiv, and Mariupol—onto a hand-woven linen fabric once hidden underground during World War II.
This act of stitching became both a protest and a healing ritual, using thread and words as weapons of truth and resilience.

The linen now carries the voices of poets across generations. In this workshop, participants are invited to continue this living work by embroidering war-time poetry by Iryna Starovoyt and the late Viktorija Amelina, who was tragically killed in Kramatorsk.

No prior experience in embroidery is required. All materials will be provided.
The workshop will be held in English.

Number of participants: max. 15
Duration: 17:00 – 18:30
Free registration via Eventbrite
Via Arno, 10 Prato

The workshop is part of the Cultura Lituana in Italia 2025–2026 program.
The Cultura Lituana in Italia 2025–2026 program is implemented by the Lithuanian Culture Institute and the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in the Italian Republic.

Susanne Khalil Yusef, detail of Café Disorient-We Want To Live, 2021, Valkhof Museum, Nijmegen, Netherlands. Photo by Flip Franssen.

This year, the British Textile Biennial (BTB) invited Textile Culture Net (TCN) to co-curate and develop a special online exhibition that expands the Biennial’s 2025 theme, of industrial production, synthetic cloth over the past century, the damage it has wrought, and what we can recover from alternative traditions through a global perspective.

Next week, join two free online panel discussions moderated by Laurie Peake, BTB’s Artistic Director, in which artists and experts expand on these themes and how textiles carry the traces of labour, industry, and nature:

Monday 20 October
Thursday 23 October

Attendance is free (limited seats), for more detailled information on the entire BTB program check out their Eventbrite

Meanwhile, the British Textile Biennial 2025 runs from 2 October to 2 November across East Lancashire, UK, with exhibitions, installations, talks, and events in historic textile venues.

We’re thrilled to announce our first participation in Dutch Design Week 2025, taking part in two projects that reflect our ongoing commitment to sustainable innovation and creative collaboration.

At Klokgebouw, Strijp-S, Booth B10 we present Circular Wool – Robotufted Carpet, developed with Margaux Minodier and Casalis. The project transforms undervalued wool waste — the so-called raw wool from cheese and meat farming — into refined textile surfaces through an innovative combination of material research and robotic tufting, proposing a new circular model for interior textiles where craft and technology meet.

At the same time, we join New Order of Fashion’s program Wool: (Re)discovered at the NOOF Lab, an inspiring week of exhibitions, talks, and workshops exploring the regenerative potential of wool. On Saturday 25 October, Lottozero will contribute with a talk, Understanding Talent Development & Creative Hub Infrastructure, and a workshop, Made in Prato: A Textile Literacy Workshop for Designers, sharing our experience from Prato’s circular textile district.

We’re proud to be in such amazing company and extend our thanks to New Order of Fashion for the invitation and the inspiring collaboration.

Dutch Design Week runs from 18 to 26 October 2025 in Eindhoven.

For the fifth edition of BAW – Bolzano Art Weeks, Lottozero presents What Lies Behind the Boundaries of a Shadow?, a new site-specific installation by Barbara Prenka, curated by Lottozero and shown inside the former bar of Bolzano’s Central Station.

Developed during the artist’s residency at Lottozero (July–September 2025), the project extends Prenka’s ongoing exploration of the blanket as a sculptural and symbolic object. Recreated from scratch as a hybrid between painting and soft sculpture, the blanket becomes both surface and volume—an image of care and protection, yet also of absence and displacement. Suspended from the ceiling and illuminated by a single spotlight, the textile form hovers in darkness, transforming the empty room overlooking platform one into an intimate, contemplative space.

The installation is accompanied by a sound piece by Alessandra Novaga, which interacts with the constant rhythm of trains and travelers passing by. Embroidered words emerge as tactile signs, where language turns into texture and text becomes body.

What Lies Behind the Boundaries of a Shadow? marks the beginning of an extended collaboration between Lottozero and Barbara Prenka. A new version of the project will be presented at the Lottozero Kunsthalle in 2026 as part of the exhibition program Soft Sculpture, dedicated to contemporary approaches to sculpture through textile materials.

Presentation: 08.10 h. 17.00
Opening times: 03.10-11.10 Mo-Sa: 15.00-19.00

Ex-Restaurant Bolzano train Station, Piazza della Stazione 1
Supported by the Province of South Tyrol – Department of Culture

This Saturday, we’re opening the doors of our textile lab for a full afternoon of discovery, creativity, and connection. It's one of our favorite moments of the year — a chance to share what we’ve been working on, welcome new faces, and celebrate the vibrant community that grows around textile art and design.

Come wander through our space, chat with the people who bring it to life, and get a closer look at the tools, materials, and ideas that shape our practice. From ongoing research and experiments to personal projects and collaborative processes, you'll get an inside view of what happens at Lottozero every day.

Whether you're familiar with Lottozero or discovering it for the first time, we’d love to welcome you in. Come by, say hi, and get inspired.

Free Entry

14.00-20.00

Via Arno, 10 Prato

From Saturday September 6th to Monday September 8th you can meet us at Who’s Next , where Lottozero Studio is featured in the Creative Hub section, dedicated to services and innovation and curated by

For this occasion we‘ll showcase a broad spectrum of our work: textile developments made for our consultancy clients, selected products from the Prato textile district, and a collection of unique samples created in the Lottozero lab by international designers and artists. The presentation will highlight the diversity of approaches and the innovative use of materials that guide our practice and our collaborations.

We are looking forward to sharing our research and projects in Paris, and to opening up new conversations with brands, designers, and makers interested in textile experimentation. If you would like to learn more about our services and discover our latest work, come and meet us there!

We are thrilled to announce that in one month we will join BAW - Bolzano Art Weeks, for the fifth time in a raw, as a partner of the initiative. This year we will present “What Lies Behind the Boundaries of a Shadow?”, a new project by Barbara Prenka, developed during her residency at Lottozero, which is currently still going on.

Within the frame of this year theme - Remapping LAND/marks - Barbara Prenka’s site specific installation inhabit an empty area of the Bolazo train station with her hand sewn and embroidered blankets: hybrid objects between painting and soft sculpture, symbols of care and witnesses to conflict and social marginalisation. Through the act of covering and shaping, the blankets reinterpret space and make emptiness tangible, reactivating the memory of places.

Presentation: 08.10 h. 17.00
Opening times: 03.10-11.10 Mo-Sa: 15.00-19.00
Ex-Restaurant Bolzano train Station, Piazza della Stazione 1

Zoey Yang is a London-based Canadian-Chinese artist. Primarily working with sculptures and drawings, her works are presented as either records of actions or objects to be performed with, a process of reimagining female lived experiences in alternative narratives. Her work navigates the tension of metaphorical division between the inside and the outside (of bodies, spaces, containments, and others), troubling the seemingly definitive duality of appearances and expectations. Current focus introspects the origins of guilt and its internal relation to external morality prescriptions, traversing between religious teachings and moral guidelines implemented in largely secular societies.

Yang is a current MFA candidate at Goldsmiths University and holds a BASc in Cognitive Science and Art History from McGill University. 

Zoey Yang, Fledging, durational performance. Fledging activates the second stage of Nestling, 2024, mild steel, hand-dyed cotton and wool yarn, hand-dyed silk, chicken wire.

Lottozero invites applications from independent fashion brands for a one-week residency in the heart of Italy’s Prato fashion and textile district; a district famous for offering all phases of fashion production.

The goal is to introduce brands to the sourcing, production, and circular innovation opportunities available within the Prato textile district—Europe’s leading hub for recycled materials, textile development, and manufacturing.

The residency offers full access to Lottozero’s creative hub, textile lab, and shared studios, along with a curated introduction to the district’s extensive network of textile suppliers, manufacturers, and circular production resources. This is an opportunity to experience firsthand what it means to design and produce locally—within one of Europe’s most advanced textile ecosystems.

What’s Included: 

• One-week stay in the Lottozero residency apartment (single or duo occupancy)

• Full access to our Textile Lab, Creative Hub, and shared workspaces

• Guided tours of the Prato textile district, including:

• Visits to suppliers of stock fabrics, regenerated, recycled, and natural fibers

• Meetings with local producers and manufacturers

• Textile archives and circular economy hubs

• Tailored introductions to sourcing and production partners based on your brand’s needs

Who Should Apply:

We welcome applications from independent fashion brands that:

• Have an established identity and collection(s) in development or production

• Are interested in sourcing materials and producing garments locally

• Want to explore how working in Prato can support a more sustainable, flexible, and traceable supply chain

About the Residency:

The selected brand will spend one focused week at Lottozero, using our infrastructure and network to explore what the Prato district can offer their creative and production process. The residency also serves as a way to promote the opportunities available to brands working through Lottozero and with local partners.

How to Apply:

To apply, fill out the application form with:

• A short description of your brand and current work (max 300 words)

• A website or social media link

• A statement explaining what you hope to research, source, or develop during your residency in Prato

Application deadline: August 31st
Residency dates: September 29th to October 5th
Travel and meals are not included.