Intersecting fashion and funerals, Dr Pia Interlandi explores materials and materiality in relation to dress, death, and decomposition. Through her creative practice research, Garments for the Grave, she designs rituals for facilitating dressing, and addressing the dead body. This practice encourages audiences to consider what they will wear in death, initiating their own end-of-life plan. Pia also works with the dying to co-design a final garment and then supports their families to dress their body in personalised ritual for the funeral.

Dr Pia Interlandi has recently relocated to Perth, Western Australia to undertake a new academic appointment as Associate Professor of Creative Practice in the School of Design and the Built Environment at Curtin University.

Prior to this role, Pia spent 18 years working within RMIT University's School of Fashion and Textiles where she also completed a practice based PhD in the School of Architecture and Design, [A]Dressing death: fashioning garments for the grave in 2013.

Harnessing a toolkit of skills that combine tacit and explicit knowledge bases, Pia intermeshes scholarly and professional practice, interlacing personal reflection, community engagement, and the rigor(mortis) of academia.

Pia’s work has been commissioned by galleries including the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Science Museum (London), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam), and is featured in several documentaries. However, most of the work is buried in graves across Australia and the UK.

A founding member of the  Order of the Good Death (US), Natural Death Advocacy Network (AUS), Australian Home Funeral Alliance, and the Australian Death Studies Society, Pia has spent her entire adult life advocating for creativity at the end.

SHORT BIO:

Dr. Pia Interlandi is an Associate Professor of Creative Practice at Curtin University’s School of Design and the Built Environment. Her teaching, research, and creative practice address the materials and materiality of fashion and bodies as they pertain to death, disposal, decomposition and dispersion.  Teaching across undergraduate, honours and postgraduate programs, she combines speculative design with tacit and explicit knowledge to traverse academic and professional practice.