Each year, Packaging Première Milan introduces a new theme and invites an artist to interpret its spirit through their creative vision. For the 2026 edition, the artist is Elisabetta Bonuccelli, founder of Unokostudio, who brings to life Paper Tracks through her contemporary origami. The project celebrates care, patience, and design thinking, embracing the belief that the most inspiring creative journeys are those we take together.
A story shaped by folds, materials, and shared gestures—where the encounter between craftsmanship and industry becomes a dialogue and a source of mutual inspiration.
Paper Tracks: How far can paper take us?
Elisabetta Bonuccelli’s journey – founder of Unokostudio and featured artist for the 2026 edition of Packaging Première Milan – began in industrial design and found its full expression through her encounter with contemporary origami. Her fascination with Japan, the journeys she undertook to discover it, and her efforts to embrace Japanese culture – from studying the language to practicing calligraphy and cooking – became the perfect blend to ignite a new spark, or rather, to align the right folding lines.
Photo Courtesy of Elisabetta Bonuccelli
In origami, Elisabetta often chooses the path of abstraction, creating geometric forms and conceptual compositions, though she has also explored imitation of reality. Geometric precision, square proportions, and spatial arrangement are central to her work, and Josef Albers – the German painter and Bauhaus professor – serves as a constant reference. His research on color, form, and materials resonates deeply with her: the interaction between squares and empty spaces becomes a totem of her visual language. Ink, words, and graphic details emerge later in her artistic journey as a natural necessity: when form alone is no longer enough, the word completes the language and becomes her stylistic signature.
Her work always begins with notes, sketches, and cut-outs that are left to mature over time: an idea may remain in her notebook for years before taking shape. It is the design phase that gives true value to the work – experimentation, trial, error, and discovery lie at the heart of her creative process. It is with these premises that her encounter with Lara Castagna, Head of Event, took place, leading to the creation of the 2026 edition of Packaging Première Milan: Paper Tracks.
Photo Courtesy of Elisabetta Bonuccelli – Artwork Sample
If “Paper” carries a self-contained meaning, “Tracks” takes on many forms: a path, certainly – but toward what, or rather, traced how? Craftsmanship, the value of gesture, of the handmade and tailor-made, and of uniqueness are only some of the lines it follows. Yet they need more to come to life: the collaboration of a community – rather than a mere supply chain, a world of professionals who see in every idea a challenge to embrace. From craftsmanship to industrial production, through trials, practical obstacles, technical limitations, relentless study, and finally, innovative solutions, Paper Tracks is an invitation to recognize the value of creating together.
Every paper weight, every color choice, every finish speaks of shared journeys – of diverse skills converging, transforming a manual gesture into a dialogue with industrial excellence. In a world where speed too often replaces the time of process, Packaging Première Milan celebrates care, patience, and thoughtful design, in the belief that the most meaningful creative paths are the ones we travel together.
Elisabetta Bonuccelli
Elisabetta Bonuccelli (Unoko to some friends) was born in Turin, but considers herself an adopted Marche citizen. She has lived in Milan since 2004.
She discovered origami after a fortunate chain of events that included forced professional changes, her studies as a designer, many trips to Japan and…a documentary about Nick Cave.
In 2015, she opened @unokostudio, a creative space dedicated to her commissioned paper projects and, at the same time, to her personal artistic research.
Source: Selfridges
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