By Maria Bregman, writer, art critic, curator, and cultural producer. She has authored critical articles for publications such as Cosmopolitan, Glamour, ELLE and Esquire, and curated art exhibitions, including Zurab Tsereteli’s solo exhibitions. As a presenter for CultFM and creator of a cultural project for Cultura TV, she has broadened public engagement with the arts. Her achievements include organising international art festivals in the UK, Tunisia, Israel, serving on the jury for the Vasily Kandinsky Art Prize
Sofia Segalla’s latest artistic endeavour, Birch Roses – Rosa Beresa, offers an arresting meditation on escapism, domesticity, and quiet endurance. It is a collection that transforms the mundane into profound symbols of vulnerability and resilience, transcending the boundaries of the personal to touch upon universal themes of anxiety, growth, and hope. Segalla’s art, steeped in material sensitivity and botanical symbolism, represents a silent yet eloquent dialogue between despair and the pursuit of inner renewal.
Segalla’s kitchen pots, filled with thriving plants, symbolise what she calls “impossible hope.” The nurturing of these plants, against the backdrop of her struggles with disconnection and mental fragility, is both literal and metaphorical. Her ability to sustain life within these vessels defies the chaos of her inner world, transforming her creations into talismanic symbols of endurance.
In elevating these everyday items, Segalla mirrors a psychological defence mechanism – her domestic talismans function as anchors, stabilising her emotional turbulence. This alchemy of the mundane underscores the artist’s uncanny ability to transmute personal experiences of anxiety into visually arresting symbols of quiet triumph.
Birch Roses – Rosa Beresa collection (2023) Mother
Plants serve as the linchpin of Birch Roses – Rosa Beresa, embodying Segalla’s evolving relationship with the world and herself. The botanical elements – roots, shoots, and flourishing greenery – carry profound symbolic weight. Where plants traditionally symbolise vitality, Segalla uses them to reflect a fragile yet persistent hope.
Her deliberate choice to showcase thriving greenery, often nurtured within cracked vessels or clay forms, amplifies her exploration of anxiety as a fractured but not irreparable state of being. These plants become metaphors for resilience, illustrating how life can endure in imperfect environments. The juxtaposition of brokenness and growth creates an emotional tension that is palpable throughout her work.
Segalla’s personal confessions of feeling unable to care for plants in the past add depth to her artistic journey. The very act of sustaining these fragile lives transforms into a triumphant narrative – what she describes as “the miracle of birth.” Through this lens, her work transcends visual aesthetics to offer profound reflections on healing, patience, and regeneration.
This duality reflects Segalla’s artistic ethos: an acceptance of brokenness as a necessary state from which hope can emerge. By layering organic materials with personal symbolism, Segalla’s works gain an ethereal yet grounded quality, inviting viewers into a tactile exploration of her emotional landscape.
The quiet poetics of Segalla’s work stem from her ability to articulate profound emotions through subtle forms. The domestic stillness she portrays is not one of complacency but of introspection. This stillness offers a form of escapism – a retreat from external chaos into a world where brokenness can coexist with growth.
Segalla’s deliberate focus on slow, deliberate processes – such as nurturing plants, shaping clay, or layering textures – serves as a counterpoint to the frenetic pace of contemporary life. Her art becomes a meditation on patience, small victories, and the power of presence.
The plants she nurtures in her vessels, the fragile blooms she sculpts, and the earthy tones she employs all contribute to an unspoken language of stillness – a language that invites viewers to pause, reflect, and reconnect with their own experiences of fragility and hope.
Segalla’s work situates itself within a broader tradition of feminine domestic art, which has historically explored themes of labour, memory, and identity through everyday materials. However, she reinvents this tradition, infusing it with a contemporary urgency that resonates deeply with modern experiences of mental health and emotional dislocation.
Birch Roses – Rosa Beresa collection (2023) Child
Her collection challenges conventional perceptions of domesticity, reclaiming the kitchen and its objects as spaces of personal agency and creative expression. By elevating humble items into symbols of resilience, Segalla not only redefines their significance but also celebrates the quiet strength inherent in the domestic sphere.
Ultimately, Birch Roses – Rosa Beresa invites viewers to engage with the universal tension between anxiety and hope. Segalla’s deeply personal reflections resonate on a broader scale, offering solace to those grappling with their own emotional landscapes. The fragility of her subjects – cracked pots, delicate plants, and ephemeral materials – reflects the vulnerability of hope itself.
Yet, within this fragility lies an enduring strength. In Birch Roses – Rosa Beresa, Sofia Segalla achieves something rare: she transforms personal struggle into a universal narrative of resilience and renewal. Through her sensitive use of symbolism, materials, and botanical motifs, she offers a compelling dialogue between brokenness and growth – one that lingers long after the viewer has left her world.
