Chiachio & Giannone are a pair of artists who produce all their work together, blurring to the point of disappearance the notion of individual authorship (they sign their works as a single being: Chiachio & Giannone). While they work in an array of techniques (painting, embroidery, textile mosaic, ceramics, and porcelain), their conception of color is painterly; they see the stitch as a brushstroke. They have produced prodigious family portraits—the most common motif of their work. In piece after piece, they portray themselves along with their children-pets as imperial Chinese courtesans, as Native American Guaranies or Qullas, as peasants from Normandy, or even as jungle animals. For each piece, they do exhaustive research on the setting, the attire, and the ornamentation. In another group of works, they embroider themselves as two mature gay men together amidst stereotypical homoerotic figures. The constant recreation of their image yields a sort theatrical globetrotter spirit combined with a drag-like transformation and variety theater-like humor. C&G’s work is intentionally permeable as it pays tribute to the styles of artists and artisans they admire and to the aesthetics of different cultures; it makes references to modern women artists as well as to outsider artists, often LGTBIQ+ people. Their ceramic works combine a Latin American imaginary and the decorative motifs of French and Dutch porcelain.
At play in the embroidery process, which can take months, if not years, and for which they reuse fabrics from their own clothing or home, is an activist conception and an affective, anti-productivist, and environmentalist perspective. While they make most of their work at home, they also engage the LGTBIQ+ community, migrants minorities, and the general public in participatory works—often the production of the flags of those groups’ identities and struggles in processes that champion artisanal traditions—produced in public spaces and exhibition galleries. C&G operate as a mutable and expansive identity that begins in the intimacy of life partners and expands into a multi-species family as, through works that extend into the street, they dialogue with society at large.