Viola Pineider belongs to that rare kind of author whose biography, material and gesture cannot be told apart. A master carpenter trained in Florence in restoration and bespoke construction, she knows wood from within. Alongside the discipline of craft, another education took shape early, formed in the European underground scenes between the 1990s and the early 2000s: occupying abandoned spaces to bring them back to life, reusing and transforming discarded matter, treating creation as an act of resistance.

 

That gesture has remained hers — gathering what has been left behind and returning it to a living condition. In Rio de Janeiro, where she has lived for more than ten years, this approach found its synthesis. Here she founded ARC Studio, the laboratory where she carries her research into material forward. From that research come the wearable objects signed by ARC and the authorial works that move through the body, sculpture and space.