FER CAGGIANO

I was twelve when I won first place in an adult sand sculpture competition.

I was also the kid who bicycled around the neighborhood handing out hand-drawn posters about saving the environment. Who tried to negotiate with ants rather than let my parents kill them with pesticides.

Two things were always clear: I needed to make things. And I needed to make the world better.

As a teenager, I convinced myself art wasn’t practical. So I studied marketing, built a career, and spent years feeling like I was living someone else’s life; but life had other plans. It dragged me back to what I loved.

New York. The Art Students League. Then London, exhibitions, recognition — all the things I thought I wanted.

I got them. And felt empty anyway.

So I walked away. Returned to Brazil and spent four years as a resident artist at a Buddhist temple and volunteer at a meditation school. No galleries. No ambition. Long silences. I learned what it actually means to make something for reasons other than being seen.

Those four years changed everything. Not because I found peace, but because I found out what I was actually for.

What followed was a life that refused to stay in one place. Motherhood. Isolation in the Brazilian mountains. Love. Loss. A deep dive into Web3 that took me to stages I never expected, and into a global community of artists navigating a world none of us fully understood yet.

I’m back in Brazil now. Building a studio in Itupeva, São Paulo. Returning to paint, texture, canvas, presence.

Twenty-five years in, I’m still driven by the same two things that moved that twelve-year-old: making something meaningful, and leaving the world a little better than I found it.

Some things don’t change. Most things do.