Cork as an expression of material culture in SAGG Napoli’s exhibition at Serralves

With support from Corticeira Amorim, the Serralves Foundation is presenting SAGG Napoli’s first solo exhibition, If We Stay, We Stay Awake, at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by its Chief Curator, Inês Grosso.

Based on research conducted in Porto and references from Southern Italy, particularly the Salento region, the project examines how residents repair, adapt, and expand their homes – and on the different meanings attributed to such interventions.

In this context, various materials and solutions typically associated with the domestic sphere are transferred to the exhibition space and thereby acquire new meanings. Cork is one of the chosen materials. It plays a central role in the installation through the flooring of the exhibition space — establishing a direct link between Portuguese material culture, architecture and day-to-day practices.

“The same relationship between necessity, choice and value is found in the cork flooring, the fans and the sound compositions.These materials move from domestic use to the exhibition space. The movement of air and the circulation of different sounds guide the experiences of spectators as they walk through the room,” explains Inês Grosso, adding that this process facilitates “solutions that are often classified as banal or makeshift to become part of an artistic language and to be recognised as culture”, without, however, obscuring the living and working conditions that gave rise to their use.

The presence of cork in the exhibition also has a historical and social dimension. Mattia Tosti, Assistant Curator at Serralves, in a conversation with SAGG Napoli, explored the collective habits and cultural meanings associated with the installation’s different elements. The artist highlighted the fact that the cork flooring is an element which is “deeply rooted in Portuguese culture”, linking it to local production and traditional building practices.

SAGG Napoli also associates cork with a political dimension, citing Álvaro Siza’s project in Porto – the SAAL Bouça housing complex - as an example of a project in which construction took on a dual dimension. “The construction was not merely technical, but also social,” explains SAGG Napoli, emphasising the capacity of materials and architecture to reflect different ways of living and forms of collective organisation.

It is at this intersection between material, territory, architecture and culture that cork is integrated into the language of the exhibition, If We Stay, We Stay Awake. Cork is profoundly linked to Portuguese identity and production is thereby reinterpreted within a contemporary artistic context, revealing new ways of interpreting what we recognise as examples of design, care, necessity or value.

Body, territory and SAGG Napoli’s South Aesthetics

Born in Naples in 1991, SAGG Napoli lives and works between Milan and Naples. She is a multidisciplinary artist working across performance, video, sculpture, photography, writing, and digital culture, rooted in a critical engagement with Neapolitan identity.

Her artistic practice questions class, gender, regionalism, and mental health through an aesthetic and political framework she defines as South Aesthetics.
Drawing on architectural forms, spatial hierarchies, and visual and performative codes from Southern Italy, her work challenges dominant narratives of beauty, power, and cultural value, engaging the body as both subject and medium.

With If We Stay, We Stay Awake, the artist establishes a dialogue between different territories and ways of living, bringing Porto and southern Italy closer together, through materials, practices and everyday experiences. Cork thereby emerges as a material that is capable of carrying with it not only a history of production and use, but also memories of architecture, community and domestic life.