The usefulness of the useless

(November 2025) | At first glance, the worlds of industry and art might appear to be very far apart, with little in common. Yet in ceramics, this is not entirely true. The Italian ceramic industry has always displayed a high degree of creativity and maintains a constant dialogue with the world of art in terms of both aesthetics and technical processes. After all, ceramics is a material that requires both advanced technical expertise and artistic sensibility, qualities that in an industrial context can be summed up by the word design. In essence, when it comes to ceramics, design and art speak the same language.

This is why the pragmatic world of industry, which by its nature focuses on producing useful things, chooses to invest in art, an activity devoted to the creation of seemingly purposeless objects.

Yet these objects, through their expressive and innovative power, play an essential role in the evolution of a creative industry, demonstrating that ultimately the useless is useful.

For this reason, the Italian ceramic industry has for many years supported the prestigious International Faenza Prize Competition and in particular has sponsored the Under 35 Award since its inception.

This year, French artist Léa Renard won the 63rd Faenza Prize in the under 35 category for her installation entitled Subtle conversations of states of mind, and was granted a two-month residency in Faenza to develop a new project at the International Museum of Ceramics. The new work will be inaugurated in the Project Room, the museum’s exhibition space devoted to special projects, on 29 November 2025 at 5.30 p.m.

The winning project is a kind of wunderkammer devoted to ceramics, a cabinet of curiosities that explores different meanings and colours. It is a catalogue of tiny biomorphic forms in vivid hues and varied textures: soft, lightweight mini-sculptures that are at once playful and ironic.

“Originally conceived as models, these sculptures form part of a vast archive of contemporary curiosities,” explains Léa Renard. “By showcasing the diversity of shapes and textures, this accumulation encourages dialogue among the pieces and invites the viewer to discover hidden narratives. Each piece tells its own story while blending seamlessly into the whole. It is a poetic exploration of the relationship between the individual and the collective, between abstraction and what it evokes in each of us.”

Born in 1993 in Niort, France, Léa Renard holds a master’s degree in sociology and has been working with ceramics for around ten years, first in a small studio in Strasbourg and later through various assignments in Germany. She also worked for two years as a guide at the ceramics museum in Düsseldorf.

In 2018, Léa began her journey in the field of plastic arts, training in pottery at CNIFOP and later at the Maison de la Céramique in Dieulefit. “My move to the Maison de la Céramique proved decisive in shaping my artistic vision and the work I do today,” she recalls. “Those two years of study, experimentation, creative freedom and lightness opened the door to the world of sculpture, and I have never looked back.”

During her residency in Faenza, Léa has explored the MIC collections and worked in local decoration and mould-making workshops, developing a fascination with Faenza majolica.

Her new work is still in progress and draws on her research into traditional ceramic forms and experimentation with local clays which, unlike those she has used in the past, need to be fired at low temperatures.

The exhibition will run until 18 January 2026.