Burabacio

Sabrina Ferrero, born in 1981, is from Turin, now lives in Umbria, greatest passion: drawing.

I work as an illustrator for the major Italian publishers in the field of children’s books, young people’s books and school books. I love to deal with everything related to colour and imagination. Burabacio or Burabaciu, in Piedmontese, is the doodle. In its variant Babacio means puppet. My grandmother, every time she saw me drawing, would say: «What are you doing other burabacio?»

I have chosen to sign all my drawings with the word Burabacio to have in my name a root of the affection I have always felt for my grandmother.

Burabacio, for me, also means: «let’s not take ourselves too seriously, they’re just burabaci» and not taking oneself too seriously is always good.

I’ve been doing Burabacio for more than 35 years now, and I’m still going strong: illustrations, activity books, children’s books, cartoons and colour and wonder workshops.

I may have skipped the biographical data but they are of little importance, the important thing is not to skip what I care about and my drawings.

The main theme of my Burabacio is Wonder! That emotion that makes us wonder and helps us recognise what is worth protecting and preserving. Wonder so we don’t resign ourselves to the ugly and vulgar. You need a certain amount of training to find beauty in industrial areas, to see the poppy and not the cement, hence the Esercizi di Meraviglia, photographs contaminated by drawings and the various proposals for reinterpreting the reality found in my notebooks.

In the last year I have inaugurated Sii Gentile (Be Kind), a series of kindness suggestions that I spread through social networks to actively try to make the world a more hospitable place.