ABOUT
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ABOUT
I’m Mila Margini, an Italian visual artist, illustrator and graphic designer. MilArt is my personal research space, where I bring together instinct, thought and composition.
I graduated in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts. After completing my degree, I spent a year in the United States, where I studied Web Design and Graphic Design at college. When I returned to Italy, I worked as a graphic designer and art director between Milan and Trento, in advertising agencies.
After ten years in the field, I chose to teach, and today I teach graphic design subjects in an art high school. It was while working with my students that I rediscovered the urge to express myself personally.
At first, I thought I would transform my early paintings, but then something shifted. I reconnected with drawing, with the line, with sketching. The process became more important than the result: I start from a free sketch – sometimes by hand, sometimes digital – and build from there. Every mark is chosen, reduced, refined. I remove what’s unnecessary. Only the essential remains.
My work moves between instinct and control, form and rhythm. I seek balance between full and empty, between motion and stillness. My illustrations are a form of visual introspection. They invite you to pause, to look slowly.
I also love to design: to lay out, compose, work with typography, create posters, visual systems, and prints. For me, graphic design and illustration are two different ways of doing the same thing: giving shape to a thought.
"Now I invent my own boat."
My son said this while I was working on this website.
And it stayed with me, like a gentle sign.
Perhaps that’s what I’m really looking for: a visual boat, a language of my own, that can sail in its own way.
09
⌜ HELD ⌝
Held_ is a reflection on emotional containment.
The figure sits in ritual stillness, her body forming a closed yet balanced composition.
The bright red sun imposes a silent tension, while the blue stone she touches becomes a symbol of memory, weight, or thought.
Nothing moves, yet everything is charged.
This illustration continues Mila's research into inner states through minimal, symbolic gestures.
Like in Glass_ or Waiting_, the silence is not absence — it’s density.
⌜ 𝗛𝗘𝗟𝗗, 𝗩𝗶𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 ⌟
This is how I imagine a possible installation for the Held_ series.
Alongside the illustrations and the video, I always envision three-dimensional elements that complete the work: a sculptural presence, something physical that gives shape to what is only suggested in the images.
The central bench echoes the stone found in the series — a symbol of grounding and stillness. The suspended wires, made of red enamelled copper, represent thoughts, ideas, invisible connections between the self, the earth, and others.
An interplay of forms and materials that turns Held_ into an immersive experience — between body, image, and space.
08
⌜ GLASS_ ⌝
“Glass” is a visual meditation on fragility.
The female figure, multiplied yet never identical, explores the self through transparent surfaces and interrupted gestures.
Glass — now mirror, now chalice — becomes the filter between the world and the inner self.
But in the end, as the gesture spills what it once held, only the bare figure remains before her own absence.
A work on intimacy, silence, and the act of letting go.
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION
This virtual exhibition was conceived as a personal and immersive space to host the Glass_ series. The scene was designed as a suspended, intimate, and theatrical environment, where every element resonates with silence and presence.
At the center of the space stands a female figure — a digital sculpture born from one of my drawings, processed through artificial intelligence and integrated into the scene to express a still, timeless tension. My long-term desire is to create a real resin sculpture inspired by one of my illustrated figures, translating the digital body into matter.
The exhibition unfolds around her: a looping video of the submerged figure — the heart of the Glass_ series — is projected at the center, flanked by two static works from the same series. Above, a constellation of suspended sketches floats gently, as if held by invisible threads — traces of gesture, echoes of thought.
This space is not real, and yet it is entirely mine.
07
⌜ WHISPER_ ⌝
Whisper_ was born from a raw, expressive sketch — a figure curled into herself, as if listening inward.
In the final illustration, that same figure opens outward, surrounded by nervous, delicate lines emerging from her head like a stream of thoughts.
They are ideas, memories, reflections — a quiet tension that takes visual shape.
A mental echo that cannot be contained, that doesn’t scream, but whispers.
06
⌜ CURRENT_ ⌝
A female figure, ethereal and suspended, drifts gently in the air. Her hair and dress are moved by an invisible wind, drawing fluid lines that extend beyond the frame.
She floats, but she is not lost. She is present, immersed in her own rhythm, in a slow breath that animates the entire composition.
The gesture is minimal, essential. The palette is soft, and the space around her amplifies the sense of lightness and suspension.
Each element, reduced to the necessary, contributes to a visual atmosphere that is poetic and introspective.
05
⌜ BLUE DRIFT_ ⌝
Blue Drift_ originates from recent paper sketches — quick, instinctive visual notes. The starting point is the present: free, fluid, immediate.
The face emerges from a deep blue background, as if rising from a thought. She is a figure in transition — not fully here, but approaching. Her gaze looks afar, suggesting a conscious stillness, a state of waiting.
The title, Blue Drift, evokes this quiet floating, a gentle shift between emotion and form. The balance of filled and empty spaces, soft curves and sharp lines, creates an image that breathes without moving.
04
⌜WAITING_⌝
Waiting_ originates from the reinterpretation of one of my early oil paintings. The female figure, with her full belly, embodies a deep suspension — a form of waiting that is not only physical, but also emotional and inner.
The first illustration is composed, almost restrained; the second holds a similar pose but feels more intense, suggesting a transformation happening in silence. Both explore motherhood as a moment of listening and concentration, where time seems to stretch.
In the reel, the two images alternate in a hypnotic and repetitive rhythm, creating a powerful and symbolic visual effect. A cycle of waiting that pulses, vibrates, breathes.
03
⌜ BONDS_ ⌝
Bonds was born from an oil painting created years ago: a dense, narrative group composition where elongated, silent figures seem to belong to a shared family story. Each character relates to the others through posture, gaze, and subtle gestures, weaving invisible threads between past and present.
The digital reworking deconstructs and reconstructs the original painting, transforming figurative bonds into new graphic connections. The synthesis becomes stronger: figures are purified, lines simplified, volumes reduced — giving space to a visual rhythm shaped by neutral and harmonious palettes. The ties remain, but change form.
In the first isolated portrait, one of the female figures detaches from the group. The torso is still, but a subtle animation reveals a slow breath. Her hair extends beyond the frame, opening outward and suggesting a connection reaching beyond, toward something invisible yet present.
The final group scene is a contemporary reinterpretation of the original painting. The figures are still there, but redrawn and reshaped — yet still tied together by invisible threads. The result is a revisited memory, a bond that does not dissolve but transforms.
02
⌜ INERTIA_ ⌝
A figure suspended between gesture and withdrawal.
Inertia_ originates from an oil painting where the body appears abandoned on a chair, as if in a delicate, precarious balance. In the digital illustration, the composition remains, but the color palette softens, the line becomes more essential.
In the second illustration, the golden spiral emerges through the hair, becoming a symbol of an external force. In the reel, movement is concentrated there: the body stays still, but the hair flows, as if pulled by an invisible energy. The eyes are observing.
It is a reflection on inertia as a state of waiting and resistance. The body does not react, but it senses: time is suspended, the gesture is held back, something is about to shift.