Eliurpi shapes the intangible and takes their creative universe beyond the object, into emotion itself

At the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci in Milan, during Milan Design Week 2025, Eliurpi unveiled Panta Rei, an installation conceived as a choreography of ethereal forms undulating in the air. Subtle volumes woven in raffia and natural silk seem to capture the very instant before vanishing. The artists have created here a textile sculpture that is not merely observed—it is breathed.

Inspired by the constant motion of the Mediterranean, the work takes its name from the famous Heraclitean aphorism “everything flows,” and reflects on impermanence and transformation. Suspended or gently resting on fine supports, the pieces float like seaweed in an invisible current. Light, conceived as an active part of the installation, emanates from within or filters through the delicate bodies of the works, composing a mutable landscape that reveals the essence of change—one that silently draws us toward the natural.

If Panta Rei speaks of flow, the series Shadow and poems, first exhibited in Milan in 2024 and now on view at Il·lacions Gallery in Barcelona, invites us to pause. This collection of luminous sculptures was conceived as a tribute to Junichiro Tanizaki and his In Praise of Shadows, exploring the warmth of dim light as a contemplative, intimate, almost sacred space. Here, form retreats into concentric structures that evoke drums of shadow.

Sculptural lamps and objects with a totemic presence are born from the gesture of layering hat brims: a technique that carries with it the memory of millinery, yet frees it from its function. These pieces, crafted from natural materials, cast shadows that gently paint the walls. Their placement on stone platforms adds an echo of ritual, of introspection. Everything here becomes pause and density. More than lamps, they are suspended poems—an invitation to inhabit the subtle.

Exhibition: Panta Rei
Artists: Eliurpi. Eli Urpí and Nacho Umpiérrez
Dates: April 7–13, 2025
Venue: Cavallerizze, Via Olona 4, Milan.
Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci

Exhibition: Shadow and poems
Artists: Eliurpi. Eli Urpí and Nacho Umpiérrez
Dates: Milan, 2024. Currently in Barcelona
Venue: Il·lacions Gallery. La Rambla 130. Barcelona

Eliurpi, a four-handed biography

Eli Urpí (El Papiolet, 1985) and Nacho Umpiérrez (Colonia del Sacramento, 1983) began over a decade ago crafting silk headpieces. By chance—or perhaps fate—they came across the antique hat molds of Galician milliner María Mazás. Since then, they have reinterpreted classical millinery with a contemporary and deeply personal gaze. Their work, both exquisite and experimental, was sold at Browns (London) and Harrods, but also behind closed doors, in their showroom in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. They still welcome guests there today, in appointments that feel more like intimate encounters.

Yet their creative restlessness soon led them to blur the lines between fashion, art, and design. “We wanted the hat to stop being a functional object and become a sculpture,” says Urpí, adding: “Our greatest influence in textile art has been Aurèlia Muñoz.” That need for evolution first crystallized into hybrid pieces—hand-painted wide-brimmed hats, abstract canvases that deconstructed the hat’s form. Then came furniture—stools, tables, lighting—and more recently, textile sculpture. Each step, though natural, has also been a statement of intent: no gallery, no calendar, no concessions.

In just a few years, their works have been shown in Seoul (Cheongju Craft Biennale), Madrid (Art U Ready), Milan (Palazzo Litta and Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci), Miami (Design Miami), and Barcelona (Escat and Il·lacions). Their pieces share space with Balenciaga hats in the Matter Matters exhibition at Disseny Hub Barcelona 2025 and they have received the Saco Award for Contemporary Craft at Madrid Craft Week, garnering international attention.

In Panta Rei, they draw inspiration from the continuous movement of the Mediterranean—and if anything defines Eliurpi, it is this desire to flow, to move freely through a language of their own that blends craft, intuition, and visual poetry. Today, with no fixed gallery and no external impositions, Eliurpi flows. And as in their work, so too in their path: the essence of order is change. A change that does not distance them from their artisanal roots, but transforms them into something else: a way of thinking that is material, silent, and deeply sensitive.

Source: Eliurpi

Project by Eliurpi