What if your “nest” isn’t a place of comfort, but the first thing you need to grow away from?

Unnest is a personal reflection on belonging and estrangement. I was born in the north of Italy, a place many would associate with warmth, culture, and beauty. But for me, it never felt like home. I didn’t choose it. I simply arrived there, like a baby bird dropped into a nest built by someone else, with no say in its shape or softness.

This piece questions the assumption that our birthplace is where we’re meant to feel most rooted. Sometimes, it’s the place that first teaches us how to leave. It asks: what if the very idea of “home” is something we grow into elsewhere? What if the so-called nest is the source of discomfort, not safety?

Through layered textures and open structures, Unnest explores the feeling of being suspended between origins and destinations. Neither fully grounded nor entirely free. It’s about the quiet grief of not identifying with where you come from—and the quiet strength of searching for where you truly belong.

This artwork doesn’t offer closure. It stays open, like a bird just past the edge of a branch, wings still figuring themselves out.

The deliberate messiness and protruding forms suggest both fragility and aggression, inviting viewers to question the safety and sanctity of home-like structures. Through its raw aesthetic, Unnest becomes a meditation on displacement, impermanence, and the uneasy beauty of dismantling the familiar.