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Resident Artists

Chiachio & Giannone

Argentina

Bio

Argentinian artists Leo Chiachio (b. 1969, Buenos Aires) and Daniel Giannone (b. 1964, Córdoba) have been life and art partners since 2001, living and working together in Buenos Aires. Both trained as painters, they later embraced textile art as their primary medium, embroidering as if painting with needle and thread to tell deeply personal and richly imaginative stories. Their work is self-referential and subversive, often portraying themselves as a family, accompanied by their beloved Dachshunds, and cast in roles that traverse time, geography, and tradition.

 

Known as Chiachio & Giannone, they challenge normative ideas of masculinity, queerness, and family through fantastical embroidered worlds. They use reclaimed domestic fabrics such as vintage linens, military camouflage, and everyday clothing, grounding their visual language in both the symbolic and the familiar. Their daily practice is rigorous and collaborative. Working side by side for hours at a time, they improvise their compositions stitch by stitch. As they put it, “We don’t always agree in what we want, but we’ve learned to listen to each other. . . . The diversity of thought makes us stronger.”

 

Community engagement is central to their work. In 2017, they presented Arqueología Suave at Ruth Benzacar Art Gallery, where they invited the public to spend an afternoon embroidering together—recovering memories, exchanging across generations, and reconnecting with handcraft traditions. Over 400 people took part. In 2019, they partnered with the Museum of Latin American Art in Los Angeles to create Celebrating Diversity, a 36.5-metre-long Pride flag embroidered with the help of over 3,000 participants. This work later led the 2022 Long Beach Pride Parade. Other projects include Hope Will Never Be Silent at Transpalette in France (2022) and Genio Doméstico at Isabel Croxatto Galería in Chile (2019), which honoured Chilean protestors and the legacy of Violeta Parra. In 2021, they curated CUIR, a virtual exhibition platforming queer artists across the Americas.

 

Chiachio & Giannone’s embroidered portraits reimagine male representation through tenderness, collaboration, and play, echoing a natural world where colour, display, and ritual are forms of strength.

Works

External Links

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