Venice, November 2022 — The debut of A Decorated Woman at D3082, where fifty pairs of women's underwear hung alongside the building's own laundry line, left for residents at night's end.
The Choice
Myra Fiori's shift into art is the inevitable consequence of the career that preceded it. Art had been present throughout her personal and professional life, never absent but never central — until it was. In the same period, she chose to divide her life between Arizona and Italy. The making, by then, had started to take the lead.
The Groundwork
For years, Myra led marketing and communications for illy in the United States, where art was not a department she worked around but a language she worked in. She built Galleria Illy — a project that began in New York and grew into a global one — and directed Inspiring Creativity, an exploration of the threads connecting artistic, architectural, and design practice.
Push Button House began as Adam Kalkin's transformation of a shipping container into a sculptural home. Myra conceived its adaptation into an illy installation, first presented at the 52nd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, and then produced a short documentary on the house, which MoMA acquired.
Galleria Illy, Milan — the pop-up cultural space Myra created for illy in New York, later expanded internationally.
Both Home
Myra's professional life moved between Arizona and New York for several decades. Today, Arizona remains part of it — she still lives and works there part of the year alongside Florence and the Val d'Orcia, where she spends the rest of it. She calls both home.
Decoration was never the point. It is what is left when a woman's own words were never recorded. I use it as evidence, not adornment.
— Myra Fiori