John Baldessari once said, “I used to be very uncomfortable calling myself an artist, because I thought it was qualitative, not just a generic title.”

These words have always resonated with me.

Even today, the words “art” and “artist” often feel overused, and at times emptied of their meaning.

Others are free to call my work art, or to call me an artist. I just choose not to claim the title myself.

*”John Baldessari: An interview”, in Marcia Tucker, John Baldessari (The New Museum, NYC 1981)

SerraGlia [ˈsɛʀɑ jɑː].
Visual artist* designer and publisher.
Born 1979, Pesaro (Italy).
Lives and works in Helsinki, Finland (2009 to the present).
Fellow of the Berliner Leben Foundation, Urban Nation, Berlin (2026).
Represented by Galleria Heino (Helsinki).
Book distribution by IDEA Books (Amsterdam).

SERRAGLIA is the alias of Italian visual artist, publisher and former architect Lorenzo Servi (b. 1979). His practice uses the city as a field for observation and visual research. Since 2017, books have been at the core of his work, published through his independent imprint Other Editions.

SERRAGLIA is the alias of Lorenzo Servi (b. 1979, Pesaro), an Italian visual artist, publisher and former architect based in Helsinki since 2009.

Through graffiti and skateboarding, he learned to see the city differently: a wall as a spot to paint, a bench not as a place to sit but as something to grind. Training as an architect (MA, University of Florence, 2008) added another layer, teaching him to read the surfaces of buildings. Since then, his work has grown from a flâneur-like way of moving through the city, observing its details and imagining what else they might be.

His projects move between photography, video, installation and publishing. Inspired by the readymade and by Situationist ideas, they often sit on the line between reality and fiction, and between art and non-art.

Making art accessible has always been part of his practice, along with questioning what art is in the first place. In 2010 he founded the Imagined Museum of Contemporary Art, in 2015 he published Art Is Everywhere (BIS Publishers), and he continues to run workshops in schools and museums, exploring art as a tool for seeing and interpreting the world differently.

Since 2017 books have been at the core of his practice. Through his imprint Other Editions he publishes artist’s books and zines, distributed worldwide by IDEA Books. In 2023 Cone Wars was shortlisted for the Finnish Photobook Award and for The Most Beautiful Book in Finland (Art category).

His work has been part of several solo and group exhibitions in Finland and abroad, including the Finnish Museum of Photography, Galleria Heino, Kunsthalle Helsinki and Graphic Days Torino. Throughout 2026 he is a fellow of the Berliner Leben Foundation, hosted by Urban Nation, Berlin.

Built-environments
Urban Readymades
The urban quotidian
The overlooked
Domestic places
Relationship-between-images-words-language
Relationship-between-art-and-viewer
Connecting-visual-arts-with non-art-audiences
Series of images
Printed matter
Post-Graffiti
Humor and art

MUU artists’ association, Finland
The Union of Artist Photographers, Finland
Grafia – Association of Visual Communication Designers in Finland

2026 Taike, project grant
2024 Taike, project grant
2023–24 Kone Foundation, research grant
2022 Grafia, book production grant
2017 VISEK, project grant
2017 Taike, project grant

State Art Deposit Collection (Finland)
HUS Art Collection (Finland)
Heino Art Foundation (Finland)
Private collections in Italy, Belgium, Finland and the USA.

Collater.al
Mag Culture
Frizzifrizzi (In Italian)
Introduction @ West Carrollton High School, Ohio
PIG Magazine N. 34 (interview in Italian)
World Architects
Designboom

A complete portfolio/CV is available on request.