Valeria Vasi: Sculpting Emotion, Craft, and Quiet Power
Barcelona-based artist and designer Valeria Vasi creates objects that seem to hold a pulse of their own. Her sculptural vases and collectible pieces sit gently between art and everyday ritual, encouraging the viewer to slow down, breathe, and feel. Born in Moscow and raised in Barcelona, Vasi embodies a duality that threads through her work — a fusion of gravity and lightness, discipline and openness. This coexistence shapes pieces that are both grounding and ethereal, ancient and modern, functional and poetic.
Vasi’s creative journey began in fashion, where she fell in love with the craftsmanship behind garments — how materials are cut, shaped, and assembled. When she eventually shifted her focus to objects, she brought the same meticulous curiosity with her. Today, she works with ceramics, glass, wood, and iron, approaching each material as if she were composing an outfit: layering textures and techniques into a distinct visual language. Her process blends architectural precision with human warmth, resulting in pieces that feel intimate yet monumental.
Growing up between Moscow and Barcelona profoundly influenced her worldview. “Moscow and Barcelona are worlds apart,” she reflects. “But that duality — discipline and gravity from Moscow, openness and lightness from Barcelona — continues to shape my aesthetic and the way I approach life.” Barcelona, especially, remains an anchor for her: a city small enough to feel personal, but culturally rich enough to continually inspire. It’s a place defined by unpretentious creativity, Mediterranean light, and the grounding presence of the sea. It’s also, she insists, a city best experienced slowly — walking or cycling through smaller streets, pausing at a terrace with a glass of wine, visiting galleries at your own rhythm, allowing its light and food to reveal the city’s soul.
Emotion sits at the core of her creative process. Many of Vasi’s objects feel as though they translate internal states into three-dimensional form. She often explores what she describes as “the higher and earthly realms,” using curves, voids, and proportions to express feelings that language can’t quite capture. A curve might suggest tenderness. A void might signal silence or contemplation. These expressions are intuitive rather than logical. She returns often to essential geometries — circles, triangles, ancient shapes that feel simultaneously timeless and contemporary. Negative space is central to her vocabulary: absence as meaningful as presence. She is drawn to irregularities too — signs of erosion, growth, and the quiet truth of imperfection. Architecture gives her structure; nature brings softness and nuance.
Conscious creation is another pillar of her practice. She produces all her work locally in Catalunya, partnering closely with artisans and workshops. This choice comes with challenges — sourcing the right collaborators, embracing higher production costs — yet she views it as essential to preserving craftsmanship and reducing environmental impact. She works exclusively with natural materials and believes sustainability extends beyond the physical: it’s also about intention. “It’s about creating pieces people will cherish,” she says. “Something they’ll want to keep forever.” This philosophy is reflected in her small series and limited-edition works. When an object is handmade and rare, the connection deepens. People notice the textures, the slight irregularities, the sense that each piece carries its own life. Increasingly, she is drawn toward one-of-a-kind or collectible pieces that foster intimate relationships between object and owner.
Her studio mirrors her process — a calm, light-filled space where focus comes easily. Some pieces begin as precise sketches; others emerge organically as the material responds. Clay resists. Glass softens. Metal bends. Each material has its own will, and Vasi listens to it. Precision arrives later, during refinement. It’s within the negotiation between control and surrender that her most compelling forms appear.
As her work travels internationally through collaborations with photographers, stylists, and galleries, Vasi remains deeply involved in how each piece is presented. She thinks carefully about light, angle, and context, choosing collaborators whose sensitivity aligns with her own. For her, collaboration is a dialogue — a shared effort to preserve the essence of the work.
Timeless design, in her view, lives in silhouette, presence, craftsmanship, and materiality. A truly timeless object is one that resonates beyond trends — something that matures with you rather than expiring with fashion. Ultimately, she believes an object comes alive only once it enters someone’s home. It becomes part of their rituals, their environment, their daily light. That’s where art and life meet. When people bring one of her pieces into their space, she hopes they feel “calm and joy — alive, but also peaceful.” She hopes her objects create small moments of pause, beauty, and even dreams.
When asked what the world needs more of right now, her answer is succinct and universal — and perhaps a quiet reflection of her entire philosophy: empathy.
