Conversations
with Amela
Aiiyah Zetterberg

Perhaps with memory. As a child I loved listening to my grandmother and to older people speak of their lives: where they came from, what they had lived through, the people and the worlds they had known. Without knowing it, I was learning to bind the past to the present. In their stories history was never distant. It lived in people, in memories, in objects. That feeling stayed with me. The past is not behind us. Sometimes it is simply another layer of the present. I have always been a romantic at heart. I want moments to be more than beautiful. I want them to stay, to become memories you return to years later and still feel. This is why atmosphere matters so deeply to me. A beautiful room is not enough. It must hold a feeling, a story, a trace. Beauty is most powerful when it is bound to emotion and memory. I am drawn to what remains after us: a painting, a building, a fragment of a civilisation, a jewel, a room, a recipe. Things that still carry the hands that made them. And I have always been drawn to signs. Even as a child, time felt fluid to me. Memories could feel present. Moments seemed to speak to one another across time. Later came synchronicities: quiet coincidences, returning symbols, unexpected bridges between memory, history and what has yet to unfold. I do not need to explain them. Signs are points of connection. They join what we remember with what we live now, and what has been with what may come. Sometimes they simply ask us to pause. Ancient civilisations left signs, patterns, sculptures and fragments that still reach us thousands of years later. Once they belonged to someone’s present. Today they are traces. And still they speak to us, and perhaps shape what we create next. Monoimanii is shaped by the places, cultures, objects and signs that have left a trace. A house of art, interiors, fashion and the senses, and beneath it all, a devotion to beauty, memory, history and human expression.

It began in childhood. My grandfather drew, and once I copied his drawing of a king from Ur. I was so absorbed that I stayed awake for hours. My grandmother told me stories of our family and of the ancient worlds of the region. Spirituality has always been one of the most important parts of my life. Ancient temples, healing temples and priestesses have always held me. Something took root then: a fascination with what civilisations leave behind. Mesopotamia never left me. Not only for its history, but because thousands of years later we can stand before something a human hand once made and feel close to them. That is a quiet kind of power. Signs and symbols are among the oldest forms of human memory. A symbol can outlive a language. An object can outlive a civilisation. A story can outlive generations. And suddenly, something thousands of years old is present again.

It is not inspiration from one place. It is a gathering of traces. Something Scandinavian in restraint, space and light. Something Mediterranean in warmth, stone, nature and sensuality. Something French in art, craftsmanship, gastronomy and the art of living. And something far older, from ancient cultures, symbols and objects. These influences do not stand apart. They meet. That meeting is where Monoimanii lives. A painting, an interior, a garment, a table, a scent, a sound, a moment. I want each to become more than an object or an experience. I want it to become a memory. Something that stays.

Because these worlds are not separate. It comes from non duality. Nothing is separate. The painting and the room. The object and the presence. The ancient and the now. All of it is one. A painting can change the air of a room. A sculpture can give a space its centre. Light, material, colour and scent transform how we feel the work. Design, in the end, is experience. Monoimanii lives between art, architecture, fashion and the senses. A painting is not only something to look at. A room is not only something to decorate. An object is not only something to fill a space. Everything can carry a feeling. Everything can carry a memory. And sometimes, a sign.

Not excess. Intention. The feeling of something made with care. The right material. Beautiful craftsmanship. Space. Time. Atmosphere. A magnificent stone floor, or a simple object made beautifully. There is something very French in that understanding: that everyday life can be elevated through attention, taste and ritual.

Something felt before it is understood. Curiosity. Beauty. Perhaps recognition. A wish to know where an object came from, why a material feels familiar, why a painting makes you stop, why a room changes the way you breathe. There is always something beneath the surface. Something to discover. Perhaps even a sign.

An old house somewhere between worlds. Where contemporary design meets ancient objects. Where Scandinavian light meets Mediterranean warmth. Where French craftsmanship meets unexpected materials. Where art, fashion, music and gastronomy live together. Where signs and symbols appear quietly, as if they had always been there. Where past, present and future meet. Where time is not linear but fluid and sacred. Not perfectly polished. Deeply considered. A place with a soul.

Mono is one. Imanii comes from iman, faith. One faith. It is a world rather than a collection. A world where many influences live together without explanation. The name is a door. Beyond it, something you did not expect.

The trace. What we create. What we love. What we leave behind. A civilisation can disappear, but an object remains. A person can be gone, but their drawing remains. A family can cross countries and generations, and something of that journey remains in those who come after. Along the way there are signs, small moments, symbols, synchronicities, that remind us where we came from, where we are, and where we might be going. Memory has never belonged only to the past for me. Some memories are alive. Some signs join different moments in time. Sometimes the past is not behind us at all. It is something we carry forward. This is the deepest idea behind Monoimanii. We are shaped by what has left a trace, and by what we choose to leave behind.