Volto 6 - Face 6
Introducing a collaborative piece with artist Gionatan Scali of Turin, Italy.
Here are some words from Gioni on his Volti series.
Volti means faces in Italian.
Lately, I’ve been travelling a lot - mostly to escape. I needed a new way to express myself in places where I no longer felt like the same person. I sublet my studio in Hackney Wick, left my room in London, and started living between temporary apartments; new faces, new cities.
During my daily walks, I began searching for expressions - faces that carried emotion, life, or even silence. Blank faces, eyes lost in the glow of a screen on the Berlin metro made me feel despair. Faces afraid to reveal their soul seemed in pain. It made me realise how difficult it has become to express true feelings.
Volti was born from this need to see and feel again. Each face I draw is a reflection of what I absorb in a day - fear, joy, apathy, vulnerability. When I see nothing, I feel empty; when I find expression, I feel alive. Humans need to receive something back from one another. No expression means suppression, no expression means no soul.
Using only twelve oil pastels, I draw without a plan - pure gesture, unfiltered response. In these moments, I stop overthinking. I act. It’s the only time I find freedom, creating without deciding, letting my hand move faster than my mind.
Volti is a record of this search: a mirror of humanity’s hidden emotions and a reminder that connection begins with a glance. These works were created between Berlin and Turin, summer 2025.
Words by Gionatan Scali.
Organic T-shirt
Volto 6
£49
Volto means "face" in Italian. This series was born from the artist Gionatan Scali’s travels between Berlin and Turin in summer 2025. Moments of escape, reflection, and searching for human connection.Volto 6 Printing.
Printed in London
Gioni’s Volti series features many striking faces, each carrying its own emotion, but it was Face 6 that immediately stood out to me. Translating his original oil pastel artwork into a screen print was a careful process. Though Gioni used just twelve pastels, the layering of oils revealed over thirty distinct tones. In the end, we distilled the piece into six colours; thirty-two would have been a beautiful chaos, but far too ambitious for production. I hadn’t been to Fifth Column in Tottenham for some time, and it was exciting to be back, watching the artwork come to life in print form.
This collaboration marks a new direction for Idioma, a meeting point between art and design, between expression and wearability. Volto 6 is more than a print; it’s a reflection of shared values, curiosity, connection, and the freedom to create without boundaries.
Working with Gioni reminded us why we started Idioma in the first place: to build bridges between cultures, languages, and ideas and to tell stories you can wear.
Seth Banks - Designer
