Between Two Worlds: Art, Identity, and the Foundation of Romulus Folio
As a second-generation Italian-Australian artist, my work emerges from the space between cultures—between what’s inherited, what’s improvised, and what’s made new. My practice is grounded in storytelling through materials, memory, and gesture. It is shaped by a legacy of migration and resilience, and driven by a belief that art can hold complexity, especially when language falls short.
Romulus Folio, founded in 2023, began as a response to this very in-betweenness. Rooted in my own family’s migration story and named after both the Roman myth of Romulus and my father, since April 2024, the now gallery operates as a dynamic arts hub and open studio at The Gladstone in South Melbourne. It is a space where personal history meets public dialogue, where contemporary art and intercultural narratives intersect.
A Material Language of Survival
My grandparents came to Australia from the Islands of Sicily after World War II. They didn’t leave because they necessarily wanted to, but because war and poverty left leaving a necessity. Their lives, and mine, were built from what was at hand.
That ethos informs my material practice. Particularly the pieces created from upcycled and repurposed materials like shipping pallets and core foam and timber remnants. Included in my current exhibition Winter, are these pieces, these fragments become carriers of memory. Paint, texture, and palette knife marks echo the tactile legacy of my ancestors resourceful, resilient, and survival based on recognising how to transform what’s needed from what isn’t but has the potential to become. I don’t romanticise the past but I do devote my life to transforming what is into something truthfully beautiful.
This isn’t nostalgia. It’s reconstruction.
Between Cultures, Without a Map
My family has always been proud of their Italian heritage, but for me, belonging has never been simple. I don’t speak the language fluently. I’ve never been to Italy. I grew up between two realities: the tight-knit, Sicilian-inflected domestic world of my childhood, and the broader, more diffuse Australian landscape it’s necessary to assimilate into.
Instead, I found belonging in libraries. In art galleries. In studios.
Art became my first fluent language, where I could ask difficult questions and build meaning without needing permission. My identity as an Italian-Australian isn’t about authenticity as prescribed by others. It’s about adaptation. Transformation. Making from fragments. Creating new forms of belonging where none previously existed.
Romulus Folio: Building from Myth
The name Romulus speaks to the Roman myth of the twins abandoned at birth, raised by a wolf, and transforming adversity into building a culturally rich and stunning city. That myth is about instinct, exile, and radical creation. Like many from migrant families, my ancestors built a life from very little. So too have I, with paint, with memory, and in partnership with others.
Romulus Folio is more than a gallery. It’s an artist-run initiative and intercultural platform, developed during my artist residency at The Gladstone. With Scott Ross, we’ve built a space that supports monthly exhibitions, workshops, and public programming. Our model rejects commercial exclusivity and uplifts bold, process-driven, and community-connected work.
It’s become a space where others can tell their own layered, untidy, beautiful stories, just as I’ve begun to tell mine.
Language, Legacy, and the Limits of Belonging
Recently, I was invited by SBS Italian to be interviewed. But when they discovered I didn’t speak fluent Italian, the invitation was withdrawn. The experience left me reflective, explicitly reminding of the ways language, culture, and identity are never simple.
Despite completing a PhD in Creative Writing, I still struggle with spelling and grammar, impacted by neurodivergence and the effects of C-PTSD. I’ve always found clarity not in tidy narratives, but in the abstract and the gestural.
This is why art matters. Because it allows us to hold contradiction. To say “I belong here” and “I don’t” at the same time.
Family, Food, and Collective Making
Romulus Folio is also, I’ve recently realised, naturally and beautifully evolved into also being a family project. My parents, now retired, prepare the food for every exhibition opening. My second cousin Joey welcomes guests with flair. My brother Joseph, a deeply thoughtful observer, now contributes artwork himself. It is intergenerational. It is intimate. It is public.
We are building something quietly powerful. And we’re not alone. The Gladstone and FB Ideas continue to support the gallery’s development, helping us grow a model of artist-led, community-rooted intercultural work.
A Practice Rooted in Material, Memory, and Myth
I see my work as part of a broader conversation about contemporary Australian identity, particularly for those of us from migrant and diasporic backgrounds. My art is not about preserving tradition. It’s about rebuilding from what tradition left behind.
Through Romulus Folio, and through each body of work, I aim to create space for nuance, inclusion, and transformation.
I hope to bring this perspective, and this energy, to future art fairs, exhibitions, and institutional collaborations. My work speaks from the margins, but it’s made to be seen.
Interested Curators, Artists & Collaborators:
To learn more, view current and upcoming exhibitions at: