Elda Miniero is a multidisciplinary artist born in 1998 in Benevento, a small city in Southern Italy. Eldorado is the name of her artistic practice and ultimate goal. Moved by constant daydreaming, she explores the intersection between a collective imaginary and her personal one.

At an exchange at central Saint Martins during an Erasmus, when Elda got introduced to digital art, she figured it could enable her to merge the two seamlessly, producing video works and installation pitches more broadly accessible. Her body of work lives in Eldorado, a golden city that hosts visual works and the proposal of the artist as a catalyst figure to create new landscapes of ethical production.

I’m curious to know a bit about your backstory. How were your teen years and growing up phases? Please take us through your early memories of you practicing your craft and exploring creative mediums in school days. What is your academic background precisely?

I grew up in a house filled with art and I spent most of my teen years in-between spaces that could make me escape it. I was in every and any kind of after-school workshop, from theatre to racing skating. I would switch courses as soon as I realized I was good enough at it, the one constant for me was drawing. I always did that, it was my go-to activity, to live more inside my own world and less on the outer one. I followed a classical high school in Italy, studying Latin, Greek, and Philosophy. In my fourth year, I did a yearly exchange in Denmark, where I was in the musical theatre class. For as much as I liked inventing stories through daydreams, I discovered I liked scoring music for it and acting them out too, for other people to see. I went back to Italy to complete my high school degree, but I had a traumatic accident in April: a car hit me while I was walking on a sidewalk, making me jump headfirst into the concrete under me. I had to re-learn how to walk, memorize things, read and draw, amongst other things. I spent a year and a half in rehabilitation, I clearly needed once again a way to escape my surroundings. That came with evenings at an artist’s studio, Sara Cancellieri. At first, I was fainting after an hour or so of sketching, after a few months I was back on track but still with some difficulties organizing a line in space. She helped me through the year, so then I put together a portfolio for Rotterdam’s Willem De Kooning Academy. I got in and moved there was a joyful moment, I felt independent again. But, as one can imagine, I struggled a lot with PTSD. It took some years for me to realize that I was going through it, it was too big of a change for me to truly focus on that part at first.

Regardless, I was excited by the possibility of exploring any media I wanted by giving shape to my ideas. I trained as a multidisciplinary artist, with a focus on business and visual culture. I fell in love with digital animations and 3D media while I was at CSM for an Erasmus, so I spent the last year focusing on 3D software for animations and prints. The last months at university were spent on “The Most Beautiful Thing”, a digitally animated video that is one of the most complex ones I’ve worked on so far. Both from a stylistic point and for the personal story I gave shape to with the found audio I decided to feature. I was not traditionally trained as an animator, my BA focused on a Fine Arts at large, and not having any kind of industry reference was rather exciting when shaping my own style. It is quite far from the glossy look that is now rampant in the 3D world. I take inspiration from childhood video games and my drawings as a kid, that results in a rougher, dream-like animated scenery. This one revolves around one symbol: the goldfinch. The audio tracks it through various imaginaries, stemming from illegal markets, religious traditions, Vivaldi, and Italian popular culture. Regardless of the context in which you find it, one desires to possess it. It's the most beautiful thing you can have. Such desire inspired a jewelry piece for my animated story, that you can watch in full via my website.

“It is quite far from the glossy look that is now rampant in the 3D world. I take inspiration from childhood video games and my drawings as a kid, that results in a rougher, dream-like animated scenery.”

— Elda Miniero

What you are doing through digital art in fashion as a multidisciplinary makes me curious on your possible engagements with parallel tangible art practices. Please take me through your creative processes along with the mediums that are interlinked and support one another for you to achieve better expression.

Growing up I used my daydreams to escape the places I was in and numb myself, through art I feel more connected to my surroundings and emotions. Daydreams are fundamental to my practice. Everything in there is perfect, when I put them in practice they clearly can’t be as perfect. I had to wrap my head around it, and the discomfort I felt translates itself into a rather simple statement: no ethical consumption, no ethical production. This is where Elda becomes Eldorado. As an artist, I engage with collective imaginaries through the lenses of my personal ones. What shapes them, triggers them, is the focus of the storytelling I use to approach them. There is then definitely one I created, that embraces my digital practice. El Dorado can be a jewelry shop in Rotterdam West, a poem by Edgar Allan Poe and the nickname I was given in high school. The name has its origin in the Spanish colonization of South America, where El Dorado was the golden city they had to reach to fulfill their greed. It was clearly never found, the gold was never enough to live up to the fantasy. Over time, it became the archetype of a golden city across cultures, a fictional place where everything is perfect and abundant. In my Eldorado, I want to curate new production landscapes, based on shared execution and profit. Eldorado is under construction; it will be a digital platform where diverse entities can interact over products that are being presented with a transparent process receipt. My digital animations are a first approach to visualize the imaginary that will inhabit Eldorado, by collaborating with independent brands I get first-hand knowledge of the modes of production involved. If we assume the claim above is true, there is no ethical production. There is no Eldorado, then? With the collaborative efforts involved in this project, I aim to realize if that stays true. Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams draw out the characteristics of one in their book called “Inventing the Future, Post-capitalism and a World Without Work”. They assess that the best one is a counter-hegemonic strategy. An adaptable strategy from positions of weakness. It shall scale from local to global and recognize the power that capitalism has over every aspect of our lives, from our innermost desires to our most abstract financial movements.

A counter-hegemonic strategy includes a project to overturn the dominant neoliberal common sense and renew the collective imagination. The framework under which products come to life in Eldorado involves my research on Time, Material and Workforce used to create them, framed in a digital receipt. I started framing all of my works with it last year, starting from a concern surrounding the artist’s position. If I am to think of myself as a multidisciplinary artist, I clearly do not have an in-depth knowledge of all the disciplines I think within. I then am set to seek a collaborative practice, who works with me then, and under what conditions? Going forward, I would love to take on collaborations with creators and artisans to shape products ad hoc that add to The Golden City. I started doing so last year, with mainly artistic projects. From hacking an ancient Jewish ring that was gifted to me, with the support of an Amsterdam-based jeweler, to creating a bag with Vegan Leather produced by a Rotterdam Studio that stars in my next digital video. A glimpse of how my imaginary host's ones coming from other creatives can be found in the latest collaboration I did with the independent shoe designer Simona Vanth; I made a character interact with 3 pairs of shoes at 3 different times of the day. I mixed the music for it and built the scenery around it, to capture the viewer with both my daydreams and the amazing creations coming from this brand.

Your work as a means of storytelling is defining the current age as a digitally dependent atmosphere and, as much as it's true, what you would like to comment on the social landscape of our generation at the moment? Please tell me about your thoughts on the inevitable rise of technological innovation and development that is shifting our society for an unfamiliar territory.

I started to experiment with digital means of representation and interaction for my pieces in the past 2 years, but it started to feel an awful lot like an “easy” way out, a shelter from reality. It felt as if I was simply washing my hands of the eco-guilt, using the digital escape as the best means to represent not only my ideas but also myself as a good person, a “woke” one.

I think of myself as an artist with uncompromisable ethics. Ethics is uncompromisable, but just ideally. The reality that surrounds us is multifaceted and we have to come to terms with it. I believe that a digitally dependent world can make us embrace narratives and viewpoints that were marginalized before. But Digital and Real World have to communicate and inform each other, they shall be communicating vessels that do not stay satisfied with the eye-candy a fictional place can offer. Such places could be an exercise of speculative thinking, for dynamics we wish to see amongst us.

Could you describe your relationship with the imaginary world while composing and amalgamating various ideas? How do you solidify your concepts and what goes into actualizing the final story and artwork?

As I mentioned above, I engage with collective imaginaries through my personal ones. I love to research anything that goes into building a story of mine, from the costumes in it to the reasons for such costumes to exist at all. The story and artwork solidify themselves through my research process, which often involves interviews and long reads or watching of suggested materials. I have always had a strong passion for comics and graphic novels, so I sketch everything I imagine on a storyboard. When it is a video workfully commit to it, otherwise just try different perspectives for what’s on my mind. When it comes to making, I enjoy both a collaborative setting and a private one. It usually depends on the craft I decided to use for the project. If it is one I’m not familiar with, I can use the idea to meet craftspeople that are, enriching my knowledge and triggering their imagination too with the project in question. I like to create stories and sparkle conversations around my pieces. It brings me something to think about when I’m on my own.

I'm very curious about your favorite pastime. What do you do for fun? What kind of movies, music artists, books, do you feed on for inspiration and creative nudges?

I cannot function without music. I used to study it, this year I am back to studying. I guess that stems from a soundtrack need my pieces are starting to have, I’m curious as to where this parallel path will lead me. At the beginning of the year, I published a song that featured sampled lines from Italian rap music, creating a story around the theme of Clouds: “Nuvole”. Another of my passion is definitely acting. Apart from practicing the craft with local groups, I enjoy going to the theatre and to the cinema. I love retrospectives on particular directors mostly. When I go there physically, I usually re-draw the scenes when I am back home. If I am at home, I just screenshot and start at that very moment. I do not have any genre I obsess over; I just like stories and the absence of it if the visuals make you think of one for yourself. I am a huge reader too, currently obsessing over Federico García Lorca’s poetry, a graphic novel called L’Aimant by Lucas Harari, and CTRL+C, CTRL+V by Kenneth Goldsmith.

I want to know if you have any fear regarding the timeline we are living in currently. What are the issues and things that bother or trouble you about the life we all share?

I have many concerns about the climate crisis. Also, wars make me definitely question the global power dynamics at play and how we are all connected through a thin thread. I feel the urgency to shape a reasonable reaction.

Last but not least, please tell me a bit about your upcoming projects and concepts you are working upon.

My focus is on Eldorado. As for the projects I have on now, I am discussing with various entities about the possibility of bringing IRL one of my installations, The Womb Tent. It is a relax station, a refuge from constant stimuli, and needs to perform while at work. The digital rendering was the idea and its execution in the real world can take place on demand, enabling a collaboration between the Artist (Idea) and local craftspeople (Application). You can discover more on my website, and hopefully even more by the end of the year. I am also creating a digital video for an emerging Italian singer and producer, together with another one for the bag I mentioned above. One of the goals for this month is to get more comfortable with Blender, currently making the switch from Maya. I’m glad I found such a strong community of people on Discord doing the same, for anybody reading that is going through it too feel free to reach out. The same goes for independent brands that want to collaborate.