reviews

An exhibition at the Ocean Space in Venice exploring collective and decolonial research

IT

More than two hundred years have passed since what we in Western history have termed the “colonial era”. Even today, the most visited museums in major European and other cities display artefacts looted during that period. Ocean Space, a collaborative platform led by TBA21, is hosting ‘Tide of Returns’ – an exhibition curated by Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll that explores the themes of community and repatriation – in the former church of San Lorenzo in Venice.

Just as waves carry objects to and from the shore, the exhibition Tide of Returns, on display in the former Church of San Lorenzo in Venice – home to Ocean Space – until 11 October 2026, places an ancestral connection with nature at the heart of its discourse, acting as a voice for calls for the return and repatriation of cultural heritage. The exhibition comprises two site-specific installations that prompt a series of reflections on the links between objects and the territories in which they were produced, as well as on the limitations and contradictions of the Western perspective.

THE “TIDE OF RETURNS” EXHIBITION AT THE OCEAN SPACE IN VENICE

The installation by Repatriates Collective, From My Mother’s Country (2026), consists of sand dunes made partly from sand sourced from the homeland of the artist Noeleen Lalara, near the Gulf of Carpentaria: a place threatened by the passage of time and by changes ‒ both natural and man-made, such as the waves of rubbish constantly washed ashore by the tides. Faced with these spectres, territory and community intertwine in an act of continuous resilience: the natural and the artificial come together, affirming a sense of closeness to and care for the place. Arranged along the dunes are the Dadikwakwa-kwa – “shell dolls” –, a symbol of fertility and a narrative and educational tool for the girls of the Warnindilyakwa community. Precisely because of their social function, the Dadikwakwa-kwa fulfil a totemic and ritual role, protecting the community from the specific threats of the territory. The installation also includes a video that bears witness to the social value of the dolls for the women, highlighting the deep connection between totems, the female figure and nature. The artefacts are also central to a story of restitution: in 2023, the Manchester Museum returned 174 items belonging to the cultural heritage of the Warnindilyakwa people, including the Dadikwakwa-kwa. The installation thus reveals multiple layers of interpretation: the first concerns the ancestral connection between humankind and nature, and the second is inspired by the need to give back to the community. It is therefore becoming increasingly urgent to reflect not only on plunder and restitution, but also on the colonial framework inherent in the Western museum’s perspective and institutional structure. The act of renaming and exhibiting the Dadikwakwa-kwa far from the context in which they were created – as has happened in the past – amounts to plundering not only an object but also the entire culture and tradition that gave rise to it. Ocean Space thus presents itself as a space for reinterpreting and revaluing the Dadikwakwa-kwa in terms of their collective and ritual power.

Repatriates Collective, “From My Mother’s Country”, 2026. Exhibition view of “Tide of Returns”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi

THE WORK OF VERENA MELGAREJO WEINANDT

It is no coincidence, then, that the exhibition continues with Weaving Connections, the result of research by the German-Bolivian artist Verena Melgarejo Weinandt. The installation consists of textiles and a video featuring two women washing a braid of fabric in the waters of a river. Through a cyclical and repetitive gesture, hair is metaphorically associated with the flow of water and its intertwining, prompting reflection on the cycles within which we are all, as human beings, encompassed and bound. Starting with water, Weaving Connections offers a shift in perspective, particularly regarding stereotypes concerning indigenous peoples in the German cultural imagination. Water and braids evoke, on the one hand, a collective and ritualistic gesture, and on the other, the relationships and interdependencies that give rise to identities. The act of braiding becomes central to Verena Melgarejo Weinandt’s artistic practice as an expression of connections and continuous transformation. In the video on display, filmed on the banks of the Danube in Kritzendorf, Austria, the artist weaves a cloak which she wears and washes in water, carrying and conveying the symbolic weight of an oppressive colonial past. Water once again serves as an element of transformation, in the hope that this weight, now made visible, may become something new. The multiple layers of interpretation in Tide of Returns highlight the stratification of stereotypes and colonial dynamics, emphasising their consequences and pointing to restitution as a possible happy ending. Ocean Space takes a positive and proactive stance on an issue that has weighed heavily on world history and continues to do so. Restitution must be the first step towards reconciliation; however, this requires a transformation of the entire Western museum institution and, even before that, a shift in perspective.

Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, “Weaving Connections”, 2026. Exhibition view of “Tide of Returns”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi

THE REPATRIATES PROJECT

Tide of Returns stems from Repatriates, a research project founded by curator Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, which experiments with the creation of collaborative platforms through open calls, grants and residencies. The project’s aim and objective are to support museums’ efforts to return artefacts to their communities of origin. Through hybrid approaches combining art and research, the collective seeks to collaborate with communities to ensure their voices are heard, commissioning works capable of replacing or forging a relationship with the objects that are – or should be – returned. In this way, the exhibition at the Ocean Space serves not only as a vision for the future, but also as a new narrative within which to redefine the value of these objects.
The work of Repatriates seems even more urgent in a city like Venice. “But what did it mean to stage these conversations in Venice – a city whose collections hold colonial legacies that remain largely unacknowledged and unquestioned?”, asks Francesca Tarocco, director of the NICHE Centre for Environmental Humanities – in her contribution Talanoa in Venice: Unfinished Dialogues in the publication Tide of Returns, edited by Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, Christopher Williams-Wynn and Verena Melgarejo Weinandt – in light of the many Venetian collections exhibiting art from the Pacific.
This is why, in Venice more than in any other city, there is an urgent need for an openly declared stance such as that of the Ocean Space.

Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, “Weaving Connections”, 2026. Exhibition view of “Tide of Returns”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi

THE RESEARCH DEVELOPED BY THE OCEAN SPACE

The decolonisation of the gaze is, in fact, at the heart of the Ocean Space’s entire research programme, which offers activities and projects aimed at raising awareness of nature, acting as a champion of rights and perspectives that are inevitably intersectional. It is within this context that Nature Speaks has emerged, an initiative curated by Pietro Consolandi and Amalia Rossi and developed in collaboration with the NICHE Centre for Environmental Humanities at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and a network of activists including IDRA – Initiative for the Rights of Water Networks and the Confluence of European Water Bodies. The Nature Speaks project involves the creation of a searchable archive of research materials ‒ housed in a room within the former Church of San Lorenzo – as well as a Policy Lab that focuses on the local context of Venice and which, in October last year, drew up a Declaration of the Rights of the Venice Lagoon.
In this way, the Ocean Space manages to engage with various communities – from the international to the Venetian – bringing them together within a collective discourse. Further examples of this are the events in the public programme or those linked to the exhibitions, such as The Many Venices, a programme of guided walks organised between June and September in collaboration with the Venetian publishing house wetlands: each session is dedicated to rediscovering the city through new perspectives and the eyes of the various communities that have shaped the area.

Rebecca Canavesi

The Tide of Returns exhibition at the Ocean Space in Venice

Repatriates Collective, “From My Mother’s Country”, 2026. Exhibition view of “Tide of Returns”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, “Weaving Connections”, 2026. Exhibition view of “Tide of Returns”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Repatriates Collective, “From My Mother’s Country”, 2026. Exhibition view of “Tide of Returns”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, “Weaving Connections”, 2026. Exhibition view of “Tide of Returns”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, “Weaving Connections”, 2026. Exhibition view of “Tide of Returns”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, “Weaving Connections”, 2026. Exhibition view of “Tide of Returns”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Repatriates Collective, “From My Mother’s Country”, 2026. Exhibition view of “Tide of Returns”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Repatriates Collective, “From My Mother’s Country”, 2026. Exhibition view of “Tide of Returns”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, “Weaving Connections”, 2026. Exhibition view of “Tide of Returns”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Repatriates Collective, “From My Mother’s Country”, 2026. Exhibition view of “Tide of Returns”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Repatriates Collective, “From My Mother’s Country”, 2026. Exhibition view of “Tide of Returns”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi

The text has been translated in English using AI
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Rebecca Canavesi

June 18 · 26
A house draped in fabric. Dora Fiammetta Perini’s exhibition in Venice

IT

Curated by Charlotte Laubard, the exhibition on the island of Giudecca unfolds within a private home where the artist will carry out her practice and her life without distinction between the time of one and the other. The house, entirely clad in milky white fabric, will be manipulated and painted by Dora Fiammetta Perini, who invites visitors to interact with this space in continuous transformation.

CA’DORA is the exhibition ‒ the house, the body ‒ by Dora Fiammetta Perini (New York, 1995), curated by Charlotte Laubard in the heart of the Giudecca island and open to the public until 22 November 2026. After completing a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art in 2023 and a residency at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in 2024, Perini leaves her exhibition spaces behind and takes refuge in a private home with soaring windows, through which, for now at least, one can glimpse only milky-white fabric and a few faint, bluish painted figures. Laubard describes the project as a domestic Gesamtkunstwerk, in which the intimate becomes universal, and the radical subtraction of the space’s identity corresponds to a hyper-extension of recognition between human and object. The house is personified through an ongoing and unexpected series of pictorial and manipulative interventions, carried out by the artist throughout the entire duration of the exhibition.

Ca’ Dora, exhibition view, Venice 2026. Photo Giulio Favotto (@giulio.favotto)

THE EXHIBITION BY DORA FIAMMETTA PERINI IN VENICE

The site-specific work is totalizing, visceral, unstable. Inside the house, which the artist will inhabit as if it were her own, walls, objects, and furnishings have disappeared, concealed beneath pure white yet rough-textured cloth. The kitchen, seating, surfaces, stovetops, lights ‒ even the toaster ‒ have become epidermis; wall joints are veins, cables arteries beneath the skin. The folds carve into space like a vulnerable yet tough wound, a rind that resists time and life. Thousands of staples pierce and hold the fabric in place, echoing surgical instruments that once pierced the artist’s body, in a profound and courageous autobiographical metaphor recalling the manipulations that changed her form: the shell, the dwelling that demanded to be razed and rebuilt ‒ as Perini writes ‒ “joining the edges of the canvas, narrowing a threshold between inside and outside, giving a desired shape to a body, a house, which are the same thing”. This is precisely what will unfold in the months to come. To sew, staple, or constrict a surface is never a neutral gesture: it means deciding what remains outside and what is retained, what emerges and what is buried. The house becomes an extension of the body and the body an extension of space; both subjected to a regime of continuous transformation oscillating between control and loss of control, construction and dissolution, urgency and boredom. “An unpainted canvas seems unnatural, like cut skin”, Perini says: color, indelible, will continue to stain the house’s epidermis and alter it forever, from the fabric-covered chairs in the garden to the very heart of the space, at the highest and innermost point possible.
The experience thus becomes a free yet contemplative path: abundant light at the exit, especially on sunny days; no light in the empty niche at the end of the tiny spiral staircase, invisible from the ground floor and reached alone, physically and mentally, in the most radical sense of the term.

Ca’ Dora, exhibition view, Venice 2026. Photo Giulio Favotto (@giulio.favotto)

TIME AND CURATORSHIP

CA’DORA is a process of permanent creation and exhibition. Living within the work does not assume the tones of performance, but rather those of a cohabitation tending toward structural codependence: to inhabit means to be inhabited. Perini will continue to cook, wash her clothes, sleep, receive friends, host dinners, and store her oversized rings in a fabric-lined jewelry box. Everyday life persists in the work and, while Perini is its protagonist, those who orbit around her will inevitably leave traces on the fabric. “I am every kind of visitor”, she says, extending the body-house personification to the guests as well. Who will have “kissed the cuts”? Who will have felt overwhelmed? In this sense, time becomes curatorial material.
Laubard and Perini work on interior and exterior landscapes and on the possibility that a practice allows itself to be curated and consumed even as it consumes and cares. This is perhaps the project’s most intuitive trait: a call for continuous, curious engagement by all those involved. Every gesture in the coming months will be absorbed by the milky-white sheets until the initial whiteness disappears. Color will likely reach the ceilings; dust will take possession of every crack; there will be the inevitable marks of those who come and go. Perhaps some staples will come loose and certain tears will widen, as real wounds do. Something may break, as happens in all houses; an attempt will be made to fix the damage, and if it fails, help will be sought ‒ or the trouble will simply be lived with, as anyone does. Perini calls herself “the witch of the Giudecca island” and offers blue candies at the entrance, like in Hansel and Gretel. She reminds visitors not to accept them from strangers ‒ but she can no longer be one: she has opened the doors of her home to everyone, when the house is herself.

Vittoria Colagiovanni

Dora Fiammetta Perini

The text has been translated in English using AI

Ca’ Dora, exhibition view, Venice 2026. Photo Giulio Favotto (@giulio.favotto)
Ca’ Dora, exhibition view, Venice 2026. Photo Giulio Favotto (@giulio.favotto)
Ca’ Dora, exhibition view, Venice 2026. Photo Giulio Favotto (@giulio.favotto)
Ca’ Dora, exhibition view, Venice 2026. Photo Giulio Favotto (@giulio.favotto)
Ca’ Dora, exhibition view, Venice 2026. Photo Giulio Favotto (@giulio.favotto)
Ca’ Dora, exhibition view, Venice 2026. Photo Giulio Favotto (@giulio.favotto)
Ca’ Dora, exhibition view, Venice 2026. Photo Giulio Favotto (@giulio.favotto)
Ca’ Dora, exhibition view, Venice 2026. Photo Giulio Favotto (@giulio.favotto)
Ca’ Dora, exhibition view, Venice 2026. Photo Giulio Favotto (@giulio.favotto)
Ca’ Dora, exhibition view, Venice 2026. Photo Giulio Favotto (@giulio.favotto)
by

Vittoria Colagiovanni

June 4 · 26
The exhibition dedicated to Protocol Art in Venice

IT

Displayed at Palazzo Diedo, the exhibition “Strange Rules” – curated by Mat Dryhurst, Holly Herndon and Hans Ulrich Obrist, in collaboration with Adriana Rispoli – explores the underlying yet crucial rules that set the production, distribution and perception of culture in the digital age, introducing the concept of Protocol Art.

Algorithms, artificial intelligence models, protocols, IT platforms and technological infrastructures have become indispensable elements and invisible architectures of contemporary culture. Building on this very timely premise, the exhibition Strange Rules, on display in Venice at Palazzo Diedo until 22 November 2026, does not merely aim to describe the ways and forms in which these tools are employed in the process of creating a work of art, but rather seeks to present these processes as artistic material.
Developing this theoretical premise, Strange Rules takes the form of an ambitious exhibition project, aimed at introducing the concept of Protocol Art, in an attempt to outline the possibilities offered by the spillover of these “protocols” of the digital age into the field of art and by their hybridisation.

THE STRANGE RULES EXHIBITION IN VENICE

The exhibition itinerary is emblematically opened by the environmental installation Attention Guild (2026) by Mat Dryhust and Holly Herndon, in collaboration with SUB, in which, for the duration of the exhibition, a software is constantly translated into musical language, immediately preparing the viewer to engage with the protocols and codes of the contemporary digital and technological world. Continuing along the same lines, an initial selection of works and installations explores the multiple fields of application of the protocols at the heart of the exhibition, ranging from biology and ecology to pop culture and the procedural generation of images.

Mat Dryhurst & Holly Herndon in collaboration with SUB, Attention Guild (2026). Installation view of Strange Rules, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts & Culture. Photo credit: Joan Porcel

The works on display on the first floor further explore the ideas and themes of Protocol Art through a series of videos, paintings, site-specific installations and the remarkable permanent commission The Diambulist Humself (2026) by Philippe Parreno, a complex mobile sculpture whose behaviour is not pre-programmed, but determined by sensors that, by reading the internal and external environment, translate physical data into movement and light, not unlike a living organism inserted into the Venetian context. Finally, on the second floor, a video room presents works that explore other aspects of the relationship between technology, life and art. Overall, the exhibition is not structured as a rigidly constructed itinerary designed to promote a single interpretation of the concept of Protocol Art, but rather as a testing ground where the manifold possibilities of these “protocols” unfold in parallel, and where the formal or conceptual differences between the artworks do not detract from the exhibition’s sense of unity, which stems from the essentially coherent atmosphere that pervades it.

THE CONCEPT OF PROTOCOL ART

The central theme of the exhibition is, in fact, the very concept of Protocol Art, of which the works on display are possible manifestations. Although the shift in focus from the art object as such to the productive and cultural processes surrounding it is a line of thought that has already been historically developed, the innovative scope of the idea of Protocol Art lies in the exquisitely contemporary nature of the works, which can exist only because of the possibilities offered by current technological development and, in particular, thanks to the use of forms of artificial intelligence whose application is accepted as an established practice and reality. Protocol Art thus presents itself as an organic and coherent development in the relationship between art, technology and digital culture in the contemporary world, highlighting the processes that could increasingly shape the cultural discourse.

Mat Dryhurst & Holly Herndon with, Double-Headed Planaria by Michael Levin. Installation view of Strange Rules, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts & Culture. Photo credit: David Levene

PROTOCOL ART AND CURATION

If, in 1993, a young Hans Ulrich Obrist launched the do it project by gathering instructions from some of the greatest artists of the time on how to create works of art – aware that these would not easily become such – more than thirty years on, Strange Rules showcases those processes which, thanks to technological development, can finally allow simple instructions to become works of art. In this context, the curator assumes a fundamental mediating role between the diverse fields affected by Protocol Art, identifying its aesthetic potential and exploring its various manifestations. At the same time, the role of the curator proves central to the critical interpretation of the transformations in contemporary culture and to the attempt to assess the multiple perspectives opened up by technological evolution, seeking to bring to light the “strange rules” that characterise it.

Elia Castello

The exhibition Strange Rules at Palazzo Diedo in Venice

Trevor Paglen, Voyager (2026). Installation view of Strange Rules, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts & Culture. Photo credit: Joan Porcel
Fabien Giraud, The Final Epoch 1 (2025-2026). Installation view of Strange Rules, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts & Culture. Photo credit: David Levene
Mat Dryhurst & Holly Herndon with, Double-Headed Planaria by Michael Levin. Installation view of Strange Rules, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts & Culture. Photo credit: David Levene
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Waterfalls (2026). Installation view of Strange Rules, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts & Culture. Photo credit: David Levene
Primavera de Filippi, Plantoid (2014). Installation view of Strange Rules, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts & Culture. Photo credit: David Levene
Philippe Parreno, The Diambulist Humself (2026). Installation view of Strange Rules, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts & Culture. Photo credit: David Levene
Ken Stanley, Picbreeder (2008-2020). Installation view of Strange Rules, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts & Culture. Photo credit: Stefano Matteo
Mat Dryhurst & Holly Herndon in collaboration with SUB, Attention Guild (2026). Installation view of Strange Rules, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts & Culture. Photo credit: Joan Porcel
Simon Denny with Venkatesh Rao, Monsters Between Worlds (2026). Installation view of Strange Rules, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts & Culture. Photo credit: Joan Porcel
Michael Levin, Double-Headed Planaria. Installation view of Strange Rules, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts & Culture. Photo credit: Stefano Matteo
Philippe Parreno, The Diambulist Humself (2026). Installation view of Strange Rules, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts & Culture. Photo credit: Joan Porcel

The text has been translated in English using AI
by

Elia Castello

May 28 · 26
The opacity of painting. Lorna Simpson in Venice

IT

Until 22 November 2026, Lorna Simpson’s solo exhibition “Third Person” at Punta della Dogana in Venice immerses visitors into a layered and elusive visual universe, where identity proves to be fluid, irreducible to a single definition. Through paintings, collages and installations, the artist explores the processes of image construction, inviting the viewer to question their own gaze and to accept the intrinsic opacity of reality.

Silent rays of light traverse the spaces of Punta della Dogana – the Pinault Collection’s Venetian venue – passing through the precarious totemic sculptures of glass and magazines and striking the surface of the paintings, altering their perception. The works by Lorna Simpson (Brooklyn, 1960) do not present themselves directly to the visitor’s eye, but appear veiled, filtered, blurred. The fluidity of the paint breaks upon the canvases, further eroding their texture, reconfiguring with its own viscosity the layers of meaning in the images depicted by the artist.
The Venice exhibition, curated by Emma Lavigne in collaboration with Simpson, is the largest solo exhibition dedicated to the artist in Europe, featuring over fifty works, including paintings, collages, installations and videos. Organised in collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where an earlier version entitled Source Notes, curated by Loren Rosati, was presented in 2025, the exhibition in Venice reconfigures the curatorial project by bringing together works from the Pinault Collection, international museums, private collections and the artist’s studio, as well as new works created specifically for the spaces at Punta della Dogana.

(floor) Lorna Simpson, Black Totem, 2025, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. (wall, from left to right) Lorna Simpson, Then & Now, 2016, Tate: Presented by Tate Americas Foundation, purchased using endowment income 2017, accessioned 2021 (T15605); Three Figures, 2014, Forman Family Collection; Black Nebula, 2016, Collection of the artist; Polka Dot & Bullet Holes #2, 2016, The Holly Peterson Collection, New York Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection

LORNA SIMPSON IN VENICE

In the introductory section, the connection with the lagoon city is evident in the presence of the artist’s very first paintings, which were shown for the first time in 2015 at the Venice Biennale curated by Okwui Enwezor. The black ink drips, indelible traces of the genealogy of racial violence, pierce the screen-printed surfaces, heralding the never fully decipherable opacity of the works on display. In Three Figures (2014), the composition is fragmented; the characters appear as fading shadows, destined to lose their balance and slip out of the painting. The paint splashes blur the original photograph – a vintage image of the 1963 racial riots in Birmingham – transforming it into a universal icon of resistance to erasure and an indestructible monument to the civil struggle against violence.
Moving forward along the exhibition route, the twilight chiaroscuro of the urban scenes gives way to the polar landscapes of the paintings in the most recent Ice series, where glacial expanses – suspended between documentation and imagination – evoke a liminal, almost posthuman state. In these rarefied settings, bathed in a metaphysical blue light, solitary female figures emerge, breaking the unperturbed silence of the ice and opening up dreamlike glimpses of new possible forms of existence and relationship.

Lorna Simpson, Tried by Fire (detail), 2017, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection

The large canvases find a sensory resonance in the 2026 installation Vibrating Cycles, where black obsidian Tibetan bells, placed upon archaic structures of porphyry slabs stacked one upon another, invite the visitor to participate in a collective ritual: the act of sound becomes a meditative practice, a social act of healing that expands the iconic universe of the paintings into a shared multisensory narrative.
Ice reappears as a sculptural element in the installations scattered throughout the subsequent rooms: stacks of magazines, sometimes as tall as totems, rising from the floor and topped by blocks of glass that shield the covers, suggesting a filtered imagery, frozen forever in a dimension not fully accessible to the eye. The Ebony and Jet magazines embedded in the sculptures represent the collective memory of the African-American community, whose visual testimonies appear altered, in a precarious balance, perhaps destined to melt and disappear forever like the ice that covers them.
Magazines form part of the visual archive used by the artist in her work, particularly in her collages. These explore the processes by which images are constructed and the ways in which they convey meaning. The choice of black and white is imbued with semantic value, as the collages juxtapose, in a jarring and provocative manner, the faces of African-American women with imagery alien to them, belonging to the male, white, Western and colonising sphere. In these works, women become objects of desire, transform into animal prey, wear cumbersome European armour, dematerialise in fire, or risk sinking and disappearing forever as they unstably balance on drifting icebergs. Through these images, the artist gives voice to the precariousness of the female condition and to the impossibility for Black culture to effectively appropriate Western visual language, which cannot therefore be repurposed but must inevitably be reassembled and reinvented.

LORNA SIMPSON’S PAINTING

Painting – as is evident from the curatorial decision to give it a central role in the exhibition – proves to be the most suitable medium for conveying the complex and elusive nature of black women’s identity. The anonymous female portraits displayed in Tadao Ando’s Cube appear as ghostly presences destined to dissolve, ambiguous representations suggesting an unstable balance between individuality, authorship and perception. The viewer’s gaze – the “third person” evoked by the exhibition’s title – is the true protagonist of the exhibition: an external, subjective and shifting viewpoint, once again undefined. Simpson’s painting seems to translate into images the philosophical concept of “opacity” suggested by Édouard Glissant in Poetics of Relation: human identity has a fundamental right, namely not to be transparent or crystallised, but rather fluid, indefinable, irreducible. The women painted by the artist elude the gaze; they are not entirely legible, thereby challenging the Western desire for clarity and control.
Finally, the last room serves as a concise and universal epilogue. The 2024 work did time elapse depicts a suspended meteorite, a third element of space, which, on its journey through the universe, might remain on the periphery of human affairs or, conversely, disrupt them and leave an indelible mark. In Simpson’s work, the fate of humankind is constantly threatened by the mechanisms of erasure. Yet it is precisely this suspended temporality and the metamorphic nature of existence that allow for its eternal survival in the collective memory.

Alessandro Cerchier

Lorna Simpson’s exhibition at Punta della Dogana in Venice

(floor) Lorna Simpson, Vibrating cycles, 2026, Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth (wall) Lorna Simpson, Night Fall, 2023, Private Collection Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
(floor) Lorna Simpson, Vibrating cycles, 2026, Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth (wall, from left to right) Lorna Simpson, Night Fall, 2023, Private Collection; Thin Bands, 2019, Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth; Time, 2021, Private Collection; Howling, 2020, Gina and Stuart Peterson Collection. Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
(from left to right) Lorna Simpson, 5 Properties, 2018, Private Collection; Head on Ice #4, 2016, The George Economou Collection, Athens; Head on Ice #3, 2016, courtesy of The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Gift of the Director’s Council and Museum purchase, 2017 (2017.6) Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
Lorna Simpson, Tried by Fire (detail), 2017, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
(from left to right) Lorna Simpson, For or by the eyes, 2023, Ursula Hauser Collection, Switzerland; Third Person, 2023, Private Collection Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
(floor) Lorna Simpson, Black Totem, 2025, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. (wall, from left to right) Lorna Simpson, Then & Now, 2016, Tate: Presented by Tate Americas Foundation, purchased using endowment income 2017, accessioned 2021 (T15605); Three Figures, 2014, Forman Family Collection; Black Nebula, 2016, Collection of the artist; Polka Dot & Bullet Holes #2, 2016, The Holly Peterson Collection, New York Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
(from left to right) Lorna Simpson, Specific Notation, 2019, courtesy of Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland; did time elapse, 2024, courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Cheryl and Blair Effron, Lila Acheson Wallace, The Holly Peterson Foundation, and Modern Circle Gifts, 2025 (2025.14); All Night, 2021, Forman Family Collection Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
(from left to right) Lorna Simpson, All Night, 2021, Forman Family Collection; Observer, 2021, Collection of Marguerite Steed Hoffman; Painting, 2025, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
Lorna Simpson, Painting, 2025, Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
(from left to right) Lorna Simpson, Painting, 2025, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth; Zenith, 2021, courtesy of Christen Sveaas Art Collection; L.A., 2025, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth; Cliffs, 2025, Pinault Collection Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
Lorna Simpson, All Night, 2021, Forman Family Collection. Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
Lorna Simpson, Cliffs, 2025, Pinault Collection. Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
Lorna Simpson, Tried by Fire (detail), 2017, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
Lorna Simpson, Tried by Fire (detail), 2017, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Installation views, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection

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Alessandro Cerchier

May 14 · 26
Dayanita Singh’s meta-archive at the Archivio di Stato in Venice

IT

Until 31 July 2026, the Archivio di Stato in Venice will be open to the public, hosting a photographic exhibition by Dayanita Singh. A living, ever-evolving archive, it brings together photographs taken by the artist in archives – and elsewhere – over the last ten years.

The exhibition Archivio presents a parallel archive – a meta-archive – created by Dayanita Singh (New Delhi, 1961) over the last decade. It comprises a body of photographs taken in Bologna, Como, Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples and Palermo, featuring portraits of the respective cities’ archives, viewed from both the outside and the inside. A selection of three hundred and fifty photographs included in the project is therefore on display at the Archivio di Stato in Venice. The images, mounted on fifteen mobile wooden stands, blend seamlessly and interact perfectly with the shelving and the space. Each display stand is thematic and dedicated to an Italian city – except for Patrons, which features portraits and family photographs, and the cushions from Blue Measures. Thanks to the wooden structures, the photographs engage in a formal, exhibition-based and conceptual dialogue with the host archive.

Dayanita Singh. Archivio, installation view, Archivio di Stato, Venezia 2026. Photo Gabriele Boghlic

DAYANITA SINGH’S EXHIBITION IN VENICE

After the Archivio di Stato in Venice, the exhibition will move to the Museo Nazionale Etrusco at Villa Giulia in Rome, then to the MAO ‒ Museum of Oriental Art in Turin and finally to the Italian Cultural Institute in New Delhi, taking on a new site-specific identity at each venue and explicitly expressing the desire to offer an interpretation of the concept of the archive, understood as an organism made up of shared and shareable memories. In this sense, the words of curator Andrea Anastasio, referring to the artist and quoted in the exhibition programme, are emblematic: “Crucial to this long engagement has been the role of friendship. Access – to private homes, hidden libraries, family collections, storerooms and spaces otherwise inaccessible – was granted to her not through institutional commission alone, but also through relationships cultivated over decades. Friends have opened their doors; they have entrusted her with their stories, their interiors, their silences. In doing so, they became, in a profound sense, her patrons.”
The artist’s photographs lend the viewer eyes and a perspective they could never otherwise have, silently discovering and observing otherwise inaccessible spaces that are thus opened and made accessible. The exhibition brings to the fore the role of photography as a medium for the collective dissemination of something which, though hidden, holds value for everyone. Thus, on the one hand photography, and on the other the archive become intimate expressions of the human inclination to collect and preserve images and memories.

Dayanita Singh. Archivio, installation view, Archivio di Stato, Venezia 2026. Photo Gabriele Boghlic

THE ARCHIVE ACCORDING TO DAYANITA SINGH

What emerges from Archivio is the intimacy of a collective gesture; it is the contemplation of hidden treasures; it is the importance placed on detail which, if not immortalised, risks falling into anonymity.
Amidst a whirlwind of images that haunt the contemporary world, Singh chooses the tranquillity of a decade-long quest: a collection of photographs that grows richer with time and is constantly changing. Archivio manifests this growth through the specific recomposition and selection for each venue hosting the exhibition, thus giving concrete form to Foucault’s concept of heterotopia (a real place that functions as an “other” space). In the same venue – this time the Archivio di Stato in Venice – the façade of a Turin palace, the mise en abyme of a family album, and a labyrinth of reflections from a Venetian archive coexist. In this way, the physical archive becomes a space for collection but also a catalyst, in a discourse that connects the past, the present and all the places depicted. The images are linked by a single overarching theme: Dayanita Singh’s gaze, which offers the visitor the chance to see what they would most likely never have looked at otherwise.

Rebecca Canavesi

Dayanita Singh

Archivio di Stato di Venezia

Dayanita Singh. Archivio, installation view, Archivio di Stato, Venezia 2026. Photo Gabriele Boghlic
Dayanita Singh. Archivio, installation view, Archivio di Stato, Venezia 2026. Photo Gabriele Boghlic
Dayanita Singh. Archivio, installation view, Archivio di Stato, Venezia 2026. Photo Gabriele Boghlic
Dayanita Singh. Archivio, installation view, Archivio di Stato, Venezia 2026. Photo Gabriele Boghlic
Dayanita Singh. Archivio, installation view, Archivio di Stato, Venezia 2026. Photo Gabriele Boghlic
Dayanita Singh. Archivio, installation view, Archivio di Stato, Venezia 2026. Photo Gabriele Boghlic
Dayanita Singh. Archivio, installation view, Archivio di Stato, Venezia 2026. Photo Gabriele Boghlic
Dayanita Singh. Archivio, installation view, Archivio di Stato, Venezia 2026. Photo Gabriele Boghlic
Dayanita Singh. Archivio, installation view, Archivio di Stato, Venezia 2026. Photo Gabriele Boghlic
Dayanita Singh. Archivio, installation view, Archivio di Stato, Venezia 2026. Photo Gabriele Boghlic
Dayanita Singh. Archivio, installation view, Archivio di Stato, Venezia 2026. Photo Gabriele Boghlic
Dayanita Singh. Archivio, installation view, Archivio di Stato, Venezia 2026. Photo Gabriele Boghlic

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Rebecca Canavesi

May 7 · 26
Universal stories: the exhibitions by Michael Armitage and Amar Kanwar in Venice

IT

Palazzo Grassi, the Venetian venue of the Pinault Collection, is hosting, until 10 January 2027, the works by Michael Armitage and Amar Kanwar exploring conflict, human memory and sensitive socio-cultural and political issues. A narrative centred on the violent implications of power, expressed through a universal perspective that becomes a collective voice.

Michael Armitage was born in Nairobi in 1984, whilst Amar Kanwar was born in New Delhi twenty years earlier. These two artists, working in different media – the former in painting and the latter in video – depict their contemporary reality with profound expressive sensitivity. Both narratives blend recollections, memories and episodes from human history, bringing together the individual and collective dimensions.

MICHAEL ARMITAGE AT PALAZZO GRASSI

Michael Armitage. The Promise of Change, curated by Jean-Marie Gallais, in collaboration with Hans Ulrich Obrist on the catalogue, Caroline Bourgeois and Michelle Mlati, features forty-five paintings, each of which depicts a daily reality experienced by many and (probably) unknown to those who have never encountered it. Armitage paints on large lubugo canvases made from tree bark, following an artistic practice widespread in Uganda. Lubugo cloth is characterised by holes and tears, an ambivalence between fragility and resilience that echoes in the themes addressed by Armitage. The holes, described by Obrist as “scars on a body” in the interview published in the exhibition catalogue, become, in the artist’s own words, “my attempts at sewing or the stitches I put into the cloth. […] I want to make work that has a relationship to a cultural history. […] It’s just a way of making that part of the work so I can talk about other things”.

Michael Armitage, Dandora (Xala, Musicians), 2022, Pinault Collection. Installation view Marco Cappelletti Studio

The cultural history of Africa, particularly East Africa, is central to Michael Armitage’s artistic output, both in terms of imagery and content. His works are inspired by fragments of current events: in Curfew (Likoni March 27 2020) from 2022, it is the violent police crackdown on passengers waiting for a ferry; in Nyali Beach Boys from 2016, it is the scourge of sex tourism; in Mkokoteni from 2019, meaning “cart” in Swahili, it is a means of transporting goods widely used in Kenya. Violence, both in expression and content, is the central theme of Armitage’s work, taking shape in almost abstract colours, with clear references to the paintings of Goya and the Fauves. The tragic events of the present range from clashes during political demonstrations to public summary executions, to the hardships faced by migrants, the use of glue as a narcotic, and even gang rape. Armitage draws on a story he knows, one he has lived through, and which echoes in his memory, to speak to the world about issues that are universal and which, universally, must be addressed. This story, “unknown” to the West, is shared by the artist, but also rewritten and decolonised through references to the filmmaker Ousmane Sembène. Thus, issues emerge that cannot fail to concern anyone who has the courage to acknowledge them and not look the other way. Anyone, because in #mydressmychoice (2015) the violence suffered by the protagonist was there for all to see – not only by those who caused it, but also by those who shared it online. The exhibition is heart-wrenching because it succeeds in sharing the pain and fostering a sense of community. However successful and powerful it may be, it would require a trigger warning at the outset.
The exhibition is spread over two floors and is organised into thematic sections. The selection of forty-five works provides a comprehensive overview of Armitage’s oeuvre. It is worth spending some time in the room dedicated to preparatory drawings and in the one featuring a series of in-depth studies on lubugo cloth. Here, the videos focus on the material, whilst the bibliographical references are connected to the exhibition. A valuable selection of texts, including the exhibition catalogue edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist, proves to be an effective tool for understanding the artist’s perspective.

THE AMAR KANWAR EXHIBITION

On the second floor of Palazzo Grassi are the two multimedia installations The Torn First Pages (2004–08) and The Peacock’s Graveyard (2023), the centrepieces of the exhibition Amar Kanwar. Co-travellers, curated by Jean-Marie Gallais. The Torn First Pages, a nineteen-channel video, is displayed on metal frames running along three rooms and is accompanied by a book – a symbol of the visual storytelling. The video installation combines printed materials and archive footage – footage of demonstrations filmed by activists – with the aim of paying homage to the story of Ko Than Htay. The title of the work derives precisely from the bookseller’s act of protest, in which he tore out the first page of every book he sold: the page which, as required by law, listed the regime’s political objectives. The video installation bears witness to Kanwar’s commitment to supporting the democratic movements active in Myanmar, documenting the complexity of the struggle and the atrocities of the dictatorship.

Amar Kanwar, The Peacock’s Graveyard, 2023, Pinault Collection. Installation view Amar Kanwar. Co-travellers, 2026 Photo Marco Cappelletti Studio © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection

In a separate room, in a more intimate setting, The Peacock’s Graveyard explores the theme of memory through a reflection on death: the result is a timeless narrative comprising five stories written by the artist. A contemporary fairy tale rendered in the video through a juxtaposition of texts and metaphorical images, accompanied by the sound of a raga (an Indian melody), which heightens the narrative’s poetic power, inducing a trance-like sensation. Kanwar’s are “timeless fairy tales”, to quote François Pinault’s words in the catalogue regarding the work The Peacock’s Graveyard, which has recently joined his collection.

A COLLECTIVE ISSUE

The two exhibitions at Palazzo Grassi shed light on themes that have been obscured or ignored by Western history, told through the works of Michael Armitage and Amar Kanwar who, though distant in style and geography, raise common questions about violence, abuse and contemporary tragedies. The common thread is certainly violence in its various forms, but also, and above all, an awareness of how necessary it is to listen and respond collectively. The sense of a shared community – as human beings – arises from an awareness of the present and is evoked by Armitage’s works, as well as by the images in The Torn First Pages and the universally valid morals of The Peacock’s Graveyard.
To echo the thoughts of Elias Canetti in Crowds and Power (1960): “All the distances that men have created around themselves are dictated by the fear of being touched”. If the experience of the crowd is a profound human experience that allows us to experience a moment of primordial equality, then the only way to be equal is to be touched by the same problems, to be confronted with the same violence.

Rebecca Canavesi

Pinault Collection

(from left to right) Michael Armitage, Nyayo, 2017, Private Collection; Strange Fruit, 2016, Private Collection. Installation view Marco Cappelletti Studio
(from left to right) Michael Armitage, Strange Fruit, 2016, Private Collection; Baikoko at the mouth of the Mwachema River, 2016, Private Collection. Installation view Marco Cappelletti Studio
Michael Armitage, Dandora (Xala, Musicians), 2022, Pinault Collection. Installation view Marco Cappelletti Studio
(from left to right) Michael Armitage, Conjestina, 2017, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; Curfew, (Likoni March 27 2020), 2022, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Gift of Ronnie Heyman in honor of Ann Temkin. Acc. no.: 768.2022; Necklacing, 2016, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Bequest of Gioconda King, by exchange, 2018 (2018.937). Installation view Marco Cappelletti Studio
Amar Kanwar, The Torn First Pages, 2004-2008, Collection of the artist. Installation view Amar Kanwar. Co-travellers, 2026. Photo Marco Cappelletti Studio © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
Amar Kanwar, The Peacock’s Graveyard, 2023, Pinault Collection. Installation view Amar Kanwar. Co-travellers, 2026. Photo Marco Cappelletti Studio © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
Amar Kanwar, The Torn First Pages, 2004-2008, Collection of the artist. Installation view Amar Kanwar. Co-travellers, 2026. Photo Marco Cappelletti Studio © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
Amar Kanwar, The Torn First Pages, 2004-2008, Collection of the artist. Installation view Amar Kanwar. Co-travellers, 2026. Photo Marco Cappelletti Studio © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection

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Rebecca Canavesi

April 16 · 26
Embroidery as social protest: Ana Silva’s exhibition in Bergamo

IT

Angolan-Portuguese artist Ana Silva presents her work for the first time within an Italian institution. The exhibition “Eau”, on view through 6 September 2026, at Spazio Zero of GAMeC in Bergamo and curated by Lorenzo Giusti, addresses urgent socio-cultural issues of the present, critiquing the unchecked consumption of an essential resource such as water and the broader effects of globalization.

The pressing issue of access to water lies at the heart of the solo exhibition by Ana Silva (Calulo, 1979) at GAMeC in Bergamo. Installed in Spazio Zero, the show brings together two new series of textile works: Agua (2024-25) ‒ conceived specifically for the show ‒ and Guardiãs (2024-25), which engage in dialogue with the earlier series O Fardo / Vestir Memórias (2023). Through the language of embroidery, the artist denounces the scarcity of a resource essential to survival, particularly in contexts where it is not a right but a privilege. In this light, Silva depicts landscapes that trace the geography of her own biography ‒ from Angola, her country of birth, to Portugal and Brazil.

Ana Silva ‒ Eau. Installation view. GAMeC, Bergamo, 2026. Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri. Courtesy GAMeC ‒ Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo

ANA SILVA’S EXHIBITION IN BERGAMO

The most recent series feature environments ranging from semi-desert areas to lush ecosystems, such as the savanna during the rainy season. These settings are interwoven with female figures ‒ symbols of generosity and renewal ‒ and children, guardians of intergenerational memory and the environment. It is often the latter who carry heavy containers of drinking water in the poorest communities of the African continent.
A significant theme, which Silva addresses with remarkable subtlety. Her works are made from a light, semi-transparent material crinoline, that allows her to work on a large scale, revealing the various stages of production and the process behind each piece. The subjects are initially rendered using machine embroidery ‒ a practice traditionally associated with men in Angola ‒ and are then reworked through Silva’s manual intervention, introducing decorative details.
On the occasion of the exhibition ‒ part of the cultural program Pedagogy of Hope, promoted by GAMeC in 2026 ‒ Ana Silva initiated a collaboration with a network of local embroiderers, invited to intervene in her works, transforming embroidery into a relational artistic practice. The program’s title refers to the pedagogical writings of Brazilian thinker Paulo Freire and is inspired by the concept of “education as shared learning and a tool for emancipation and social transformation”, highlighting the role of educational action within the museum context. Upon entering the first room, visitors encounter a combination of works from which figures in shifting colors emerge, appearing suspended and layered in space. In dialogue with the bright, white setting ‒ a perfect white cube ‒ that frames them and enhances their presence, the works create an ethereal imagery, as though merging with the surrounding environment.

Ana Silva ‒ Eau. Installation view. GAMeC, Bergamo, 2026. Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri. Courtesy GAMeC ‒ Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo

THE WORKS CREATED BY ANA SILVA
In the series O Fardo / Vestir Memórias, the artist instead employs industrial materials: plastic sacks commonly used in markets to transport second-hand clothing from the Global North to the Global South. Approximately 80% of these garments cannot be reused, ending up burned or, in the worst cases, discarded at sea. In this way, Silva reclaims the waste of a consumerist system, reconfiguring an ecosystem that speaks to sustainability and socio-economic relations. The sacks thus become new surfaces on which to embroider human figures ‒primarily women and children encountered in African markets ‒ telling a broader story. Unlike the more recent series, these works originate directly from the act of embroidery and do not develop through successive layering. Although this technique prevents the clear identification of the depicted subjects, it becomes a means to subvert the logic of globalized systems: embroidery is an ancient practice, slow and requiring dedication, standing in opposition to the speed of fast fashion. Manual labor, therefore, is not only tied to environmental concerns but also to cultural and social ones.
The works displayed in the second room are likewise suspended in a white, neutral spatial frame that enhances their vivid colors and decorative patterns. This effective display strategy fosters a silent dialogue between the viewer and Silva’s works, prompting a deeper reflection on the urgencies of our time.
The exhibition ultimately offers a compelling response to the need for inclusive and participatory cultural narratives and practices of social critique.

Elena Mutti

Ana Silva’s exhibition at GAMeC in Bergamo

Ana Silva ‒ Eau. Installation view. GAMeC, Bergamo, 2026. Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri. Courtesy GAMeC ‒ Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo
Ana Silva ‒ Eau. Installation view. GAMeC, Bergamo, 2026. Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri. Courtesy GAMeC ‒ Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo
Ana Silva ‒ Eau. Installation view. GAMeC, Bergamo, 2026. Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri. Courtesy GAMeC ‒ Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo
Ana Silva ‒ Eau. Installation view. GAMeC, Bergamo, 2026. Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri. Courtesy GAMeC ‒ Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo
Ana Silva ‒ Eau. Installation view. GAMeC, Bergamo, 2026. Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri. Courtesy GAMeC ‒ Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo
Ana Silva ‒ Eau. Installation view. GAMeC, Bergamo, 2026. Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri. Courtesy GAMeC ‒ Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo
Ana Silva ‒ Eau. Installation view. GAMeC, Bergamo, 2026. Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri. Courtesy GAMeC ‒ Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo
Ana Silva ‒ Eau. Installation view. GAMeC, Bergamo, 2026. Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri. Courtesy GAMeC ‒ Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo
Ana Silva ‒ Eau. Installation view. GAMeC, Bergamo, 2026. Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri. Courtesy GAMeC ‒ Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo
Ana Silva ‒ Eau. Installation view. GAMeC, Bergamo, 2026. Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri. Courtesy GAMeC ‒ Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo
Ana Silva ‒ Eau. Installation view. GAMeC, Bergamo, 2026. Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri. Courtesy GAMeC ‒ Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo

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Elena Mutti

April 16 · 26
When museums meet contemporary art: MUSE – the Science Museum in Trento

IT

A new episode of our series dedicated to museums embracing art, particularly contemporary art. This time, we talk about MUSE – the Science Museum in Trento: an offshoot of the century-old Trento Civic Museum of Natural History, it has, in recent years, taken on a key role in the contemporary art scene, thanks to its research programmes, open calls and exhibitions.

“The function of a natural history museum is first to increase and then to disseminate scientific knowledge”. This quote from James Smithson, founder of the Smithsonian Institution, features on MUSE’s platforms and encapsulates the museum’s approach adopted by the Trentino-based institution. MUSE – the Science Museum in Trento presents itself as a centre for research through selected guests, collaborations, projects and open calls. This research is communicated to the public in a clear, interdisciplinary and accessible manner. The museum network now comprises six affiliated venues, exemplifying a dense web of collaborations woven across the region. Within these spaces, each with its own distinct character, the results of research are conveyed through exhibition programmes. This is how the Science Museum places rigorous scientific practice at the service of cultural enrichment, with a view to generating knowledge whilst remaining open to the surrounding realities. The promotion of culture championed by MUSE, particularly through initiatives focused on contemporary art, is effective because it is multifaceted and far-reaching. Through interdisciplinary and targeted projects, the Science Museum has built a genuine art ecosystem comprising open calls, residencies, publications and exhibitions.

MUSE. Courtesy MUSE Archive. Photo Roberto Nova

THE COLLECTION AND RESEARCH AT THE MUSE IN TRENTO

The Anthropocene programme was launched in 2020 and is structured as a research initiative addressing urgent ecological issues, developed through transdisciplinary approaches. The aim is to stimulate debate by adopting a scientific perspective blended with artistic elements. Anthropocene draws on the creative output of We Are The Flood. A fluid platform, as its curator Stefano Cagol describes it, conceived by the Trento Science Museum, which, by fostering a dialogue between art and science, presents itself as a New Bauhaus, where archival and curatorial dimensions coexist.
The project proves effective in both method and content: as well as raising awareness of the present, thanks to the open call it ensures the participation of emerging artists and the subsequent staging of exhibitions within the museum, triggering exchanges and experimentation both within the museum and beyond its walls.
The collection, established as part of the project and the Plan for Contemporary Art (PAC) 2022-2023, is the first in Italy to focus on the theme of the Anthropocene. Launched with an initial core of fourteen works, the collection has expanded over the years to embrace transdisciplinary practices and languages to explore today’s ecological issues.

Laura Pugno, Over Time, 2021. Documentation, video footage, Passo dei Salati. Photo Laura Pugno

Laura Pugno’s work fits well within the extensive network of collaborations promoted by MUSE. Over Time is one of the winning projects of the Italian Council 2020, now part of the Anthropocene collection but initially conceived for the Post-Water exhibition, hosted by the Museo Nazionale della Montagna in Turin. The artist, interested in landscape as a cultural product, had presented a reflection on the form and memory of snow at the Turin museum, exhibiting, in 2018, a few snow casts in Jesmonite. Andrea Lerda, curator of the Sustainability programme at the Museo Nazionale della Montagna, describes the work that has entered the MUSE collection as follows:
“The Overtime project set out to explore our historical and ancestral relationship with the imagery of winter and snow, and how this might change because of global warming. It examined how the decline in snowfall might lead to a loss of connection with this deeply romantic world. Thus, with the involvement of the scientific community, Overtime was born. Laura conceived this three-channel video installation, one channel of which was filmed at the Oasi Zegna (Biella), another at the Angelo Mosso Institute (located on the Passo dei Salati, in the Monte Rosa massif, Vercelli) and the third at the synthetic snow production facility near Cremona. This dystopian imagery has been distilled into these narratives, and the video was presented with a soundtrack composed by sound artist Magda Drozd, who accompanied the artist throughout the recording process, sampling the sounds of snow”.
The transdisciplinary and open-ended approach underpinning Anthropocene is confirmed by its residency programmes, such as the one launched in 2022 with the participation of Mary Mattingly, and by its editorial focus, with the publications of We Are The Flood – including the latest from postmediabooks.

Palazzo delle Albere and MUSE. Courtesy MUSE Archive

THE VENUES OF MUSE

The various exhibition spaces and partner venues across the region, each dedicated to specific exhibitions and projects, reinforce the system established by MUSE. The museum’s collection is displayed within the glass-fronted building designed by Renzo Piano with a strong focus on environmental sustainability, evident in the materials used and the building’s relationship with its surroundings. The MUSE building engages in dialogue and interacts with the Palazzo delle Albere, another exhibition venue within the museum circuit dedicated to historical exhibitions.
Until 13 September 2026, the Renaissance palace provides the setting for The Power of Machines. Humanity, Environment, Technology in 16th-Century Trentino, the exhibition that reaffirms, once again, the close bond between the museum and the local area.
Among the various venues with which MUSE maintains a partnership, Castel Belasi is particularly noteworthy: the contemporary art centre directed since 2023 by Stefano Cagol, housed within a medieval castle in the municipality of Campodenno (Trento). Castel Belasi showcases not only diverse media and artistic languages, but also established and emerging artists who contribute to the evolution of a coherent and comprehensive system.
Fragile. A Selection of Glasstress, curated by Sandrine Welte and Adriano Berengo, the result of a collaboration with Berengo Studio in Murano, presented an exploration of the ambivalence of glass – its interplay of strength and fragility – through the work of artists such as Erwin Wurm, Ai Weiwei, Mimmo Paladino and Thomas Schütte, whilst From the Anthropocene to the Biocene brought together in the project room nine artists under 35 from the masterclass organised by the museum. In this way, works by internationally renowned artists and emerging research within the museum converge in the same spaces, layering the MUSE’s levels of interest in contemporary art and integrating into the exhibition programme of Castel Belasi.
Considering the projects analysed and the fruitful relationships forged by the museum, it is possible to confirm the validity of the initial slogan: MUSE occupies a space at the intersection of knowledge production and participatory dialogue with society, raising awareness of current urgent issues and disseminating knowledge rooted in both the scientific and artistic spheres.

Rebecca Canavesi

MUSE ‒ The Science Museum in Trento

Anthropocene Collection. Courtesy MUSE Archive. Photo Michele Purin
Erwin Wurm, Iced Pickle Tree (detail). Fragile. A selection of Glasstress. Photo J.B. Musick
Laura Pugno, Over Time, 2021. Documentation, video footage, Passo dei Salati. Photo Laura Pugno
Fragile. A selection of Glasstress, exhibition view. Courtesy MUSE Archive. Photo Michele Purin
MUSE. Courtesy MUSE Archive. Photo Roberto Nova
Palazzo delle Albere. Courtesy MUSE Archive. Photo Michele Purin
Mary Mattingly, Lacrima, 2023. Courtesy MUSE Archive
Palazzo delle Albere and MUSE. Courtesy MUSE Archive

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Rebecca Canavesi

April 9 · 26
Inhabiting the interstice: Mona Hatoum at the Fondazione Prada in Milan

IT

The exhibition “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum in the Cisterna space of the Fondazione Prada in Milan brings together three site-specific installations that explore the dimensions of the “over,” the “under,” and the “in between” as both spatial and existential coordinates. Hatoum translates her diasporic experience into a field of tensions between boundary and crossing, stability and precariousness, turning the Cisterna into an interstitial space to inhabit.

“Over, under and in between.” Three spaces. What is over: superstructure, boundary, the ideological scaffold. What is under: matter, body, personal memory, identity. What lies in between: diaspora, hybridity, statelessness, thirdness. These three coordinates – spatial as well as existential – unfold across the three naves of the Cisterna at the Fondazione Prada in Milan, where, until 9 November 2026, three new site-specific installations by Mona Hatoum are on view. The artist’s practice itself unfolds within this triadic structure.

Mona Hatoum, photo Marta Marinotti. Courtesy Fondazione Prada

Mona Hatoum was born in Beirut in 1952 to Palestinian parents exiled in Lebanon. In 1975, when the artist travelled to London for a short stay, the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war forced her into exile, making it impossible for her to return to her family. This condition of stateless exile would later translate into her artistic practice as the materialization of an interstitial mental space – paradoxical, dislocated, and intimately violated. Starting in the early 1990s, Mona Hatoum’s interest gradually shifted from performance and video toward environmental and sculptural installations. The epidermalization of statelessness, coercion, and displacement that marked her early work becomes, in this phase, a meditation on matter and structure. Hatoum appropriates certain elements of a minimalist vocabulary – the modular grid, seriality, orthogonality – while unsettling their supposed objectivity and phenomenological reduction by introducing a disturbing deviation. Repetition becomes the intensification of a tension; the grid becomes a cage; structure turns into a field of contradictory and unstable forces. Matter itself seems to think – or rather, to remember. The body is evoked, form remains indeterminate, and meaning is traced back to the root of an existential conflict. Hatoum inhabits matter much as she inhabits her own identity: matter becomes diasporic, an in-between space, a field of antithetical tensions. Rootedness/migration, existence/disappearance, structure/superstructure, stability/instability, building/demolishing, boundary/crossing, intimacy/surveillance, fragility/threat.

MONA HATOUM’S EXHIBITION IN MILAN

Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, Web, 2026. Hand-blown clear glass spheres, stainless steel cable

Within the post-industrial spaces of the Cisterna – once used as the storage silos of a former alcohol distillery – Mona Hatoum intervenes site-specifically, engaging the architecture and the viewer’s physical and emotional experience, inviting them to occupy an in-between position across the three rooms. At the entrance stands Web (2026), a vast spider’s web of metal wire studded with blown-glass spheres that hangs above the space. Hatoum weaves a net in which displacement, entrapment and coercion crystallize in the fragile glass globules: the web becomes a superstructure that both ensnares and connects: it evokes barbed wire that blocks and confines, yet also the threads of familial bonds and interconnection. As the artist notes in the exhibition’s introductory text: “A web can be seen as a looming net which suggests oppressive entrapment, while also providing a home or a place of safety […]”. The second room presents Map (Red) (2026). Here the floor is covered with a world map composed of more than thirty thousand loose red glass spheres. Stripped of geopolitical borders, the world dissolves into a shifting, ephemeral configuration, exposed to the pull of external forces. Historically, mapping the world has functioned as a device of colonial discourse and imperial power: Hatoum re-signifies this narrative by adopting the Gall-Peters projection, which restores the Global South to its actual scale, countering the well-known distortions of the Mercator projection. Standing before it, the viewer experiences a sense of vertigo at the instability of a world composed of fragile, minute, glass-like globules – evoking tiny, provisional droplets of blood.

Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, Map (red), 2026, 25 mm clear red glass balls

The final room is activated by all of a quiver (2022). A monumental kinetic metal grid oscillates, dismantling and reassembling itself perpetually. The cubes that make up the structure periodically collapse inward, creating a rhythmic alternation of solids and voids, of birth and death, destruction and reconstruction, stability and instability, peace and war. Hatoum disrupts the minimalist grid, transforming it into a thinking body – one charged with memory, pain, and a visceral interiority. Beneath it remains only a sense of vertigo before the precariousness of existence.

OVER, UNDER AND IN BETWEEN BY MONA HATOUM AT THE FONDAZIONE PRADA

In Over, under and in between, space itself is set into play as a field of forces. The three installations trace out a third, interstitial space. Moving through the naves of the Cisterna, the visitor is compelled to negotiate distance and proximity, attraction and alertness, stability and risk. The grid reveals itself as a potential cage; glass becomes the crystallization of an identity that is never final; the interstice turns into the dwelling place of a subjectivity that exists only in tension. “In between,” then, becomes not only a position in space but also an ethical and cultural stance from which to inhabit one’s identity: to inhabit the interstice is to accept instability as a form of consciousness, transforming vulnerability into a tool for reading the reality.

Niccolò Freri

The exhibition of Mona Hatoum at the Fondazione Prada in Milan

Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, all of a quiver, 2022. Aluminum square tubes, steel hinges, electric motor, cable
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, all of a quiver, 2022. Aluminum square tubes, steel hinges, electric motor, cable
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, Web, 2026. Hand-blown clear glass spheres, stainless steel cable
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, Web, 2026. Hand-blown clear glass spheres, stainless steel cable
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, Web, 2026. Hand-blown clear glass spheres, stainless steel cable
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, Map (red), 2026, 25 mm clear red glass balls
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, Map (red), 2026, 25 mm clear red glass balls
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, Web, 2026. Hand-blown clear glass spheres, stainless steel cable
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, Web, 2026. Hand-blown clear glass spheres, stainless steel cable
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, Map (red), 2026, 25 mm clear red glass balls
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, Map (red), 2026, 25 mm clear red glass balls
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, Map (red), 2026, 25 mm clear red glass balls
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, Map (red), 2026, 25 mm clear red glass balls
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, Map (red), 2026, 25 mm clear red glass balls
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, all of a quiver, 2022. Aluminum square tubes, steel hinges, electric motor, cable
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, all of a quiver, 2022. Aluminum square tubes, steel hinges, electric motor, cable
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, all of a quiver, 2022. Aluminum square tubes, steel hinges, electric motor, cable
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, all of a quiver, 2022. Aluminum square tubes, steel hinges, electric motor, cable
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, all of a quiver, 2022. Aluminum square tubes, steel hinges, electric motor, cable
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, all of a quiver, 2022. Aluminum square tubes, steel hinges, electric motor, cable
Exhibition view of “Over, under and in between” by Mona Hatoum. Photo: Roberto Marossi. Courtesy Fondazione Prada. Mona Hatoum, all of a quiver, 2022. Aluminum square tubes, steel hinges, electric motor, cable
Mona Hatoum, photo Marta Marinotti. Courtesy Fondazione Prada
Mona Hatoum, photo Marta Marinotti. Courtesy Fondazione Prada
Mona Hatoum, photo Marta Marinotti. Courtesy Fondazione Prada

The text has been translated in English using AI
by

Niccolò Freri

March 26 · 26
Re-veiled images: Antonio Corradini and Luigi Ghirri in dialogue in Venice

IT

At the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice, the exhibition “Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri” establishes an unexpected dialogue between the veiled sculptures by Antonio Corradini and the rarefied photographs by Luigi Ghirri. Through the motif of the veil, the exhibition explores the threshold between image and reality, suggesting that truth rarely presents itself directly but instead emerges through the filtering lens of art and imagination.

A soft, diffused light seems to illuminate the metaphysical architectures that inhabit Ghirri’s (Scandiano, 1943 – Roncocesi, 1992) compositions. This muted glow permeates the landscapes and interiors captured by the photographer, projecting them into the incorporeal realm of images. In much the same way, the enigmatic veiled sculptures by Antonio Corradini (Venice, 1688 – Naples, 1752) appear to be shaped by light itself, so that their forms seem almost intangible to the eye. In both cases, the works evoke a reality in the process of dissolving, an unstable space suspended between presence and absence, light and shadow, reality and its representation.
On view at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia until 12 April 2026, the exhibition Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri brings the works of the two artists into resonance. Despite belonging to very different historical periods, Corradini and Ghirri share a strikingly similar pursuit: the creation of images that are veiled, elusive and difficult to grasp. Curated by Elisabetta Dal Carlo, Lara Marchese, Marta Savaris and Babet Trevisan with Monica De Vincenti, the exhibition reflects the cultural vision promoted by the foundation’s director Cristiana Collu, which encourages encounters between different eras, languages and sensibilities in order to prompt reflection on the urgencies of the present.
The project also responds closely to the history and collections of the museum itself. Ghirri’s photographs belong to a group of works entrusted to the foundation on loan by the collector Roberto Lombardi since 2015. Yet the immediate impetus for the exhibition was the recent rediscovery, in the museum’s storage, of a marble medallion depicting the Veiled Faith, subsequently recognised as an autograph work by Corradini.

Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura

ANTONIO CORRADINI AND LUIGI GHIRRI IN VENICE

For the Baroque sculptor Antonio Corradini, the veil became the defining element of his artistic language. Draped across the figures he carved, it marks a delicate boundary between what is revealed and what remains hidden, between material presence and spiritual meaning. Within the same gallery, Corradini’s eighteenth-century sculptures encounter a selection of photographs by Ghirri. Through his work, the contemporary artist redefined the landscape of Emilia as the site of both a formal and conceptual investigation into the nature of images. The urban views and plains captured in his photographs are punctuated by signs and simulacra – thresholds, frames, transparent and reflective surfaces – that create a constant slippage between the world and its visual representation.
In the works presented in the exhibition, images appear almost as uneasy premonitions of their own existence, never fully secure but permanently held in tension. In the two versions of the Veiled Faith – the bas-relief preserved at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia and the full-length bust at Ca’ Rezzonico – the female face never fully reveals itself. Instead, it emerges only partially through the opaque transparency of the marble veil carved by Corradini. A terracotta model for the Veiled Christ, originally commissioned for the Cappella Sansevero in Naples – though the final marble version was later executed by Giuseppe Sanmartino – presents a figure that seems to dematerialise even as it appears before us, as if it were the trace of a visual idea never fully realised. In Corradini’s work, the veil invites viewers to suspend immediate sensory perception and instead adopt a more inward, contemplative gaze.
Similarly, the plains, squares and churches depicted in Ghirri’s photographs – such as Bologna. Villa near Gaiana, Cittanova di Modena. Church on the Via Emilia, and Brescello. Square and the Church of Santa Maria – transport viewers into a suspended, almost timeless dimension. Hovering between reality and imagination, these images seem to surface from the fragile territory of memory. Ghirri’s mist-laden photographs and Corradini’s veiled sculptures do not present themselves directly to the viewer. Rather, they resist immediate comprehension, generating a persistent desire for revelation. The image thus emerges as an ongoing process – a continual making and unmaking that renews our gaze upon the world and its shifting nature.

Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura

THE EXHIBITION AT THE FONDAZIONE QUERINI STAMPALIA

The display itself appears to visitors almost as an apparition. A white curtain marks the threshold of the gallery, inviting them to step into a rarefied environment in which the motif of the veil extends across the exhibition space, creating a continuum between artwork and architecture. The walls are rendered almost immaterial by the spectacular presence of white drapery, whose luminous folds seem to hold the works suspended within them. Images and space appear to dissolve into one another, forming a dialogue that resonates strongly with the city that hosts the exhibition. Indeed, Venice itself is an unstable ecosystem shaped by light and water, where reflections and presences continually blur together. In such a setting, perception is inevitably filtered, never entirely transparent or fixed.
The works of the two artists ultimately suggest that grasping reality in its essence requires more than an immediate and direct gaze. Instead, a mediating filter – art, imagination, or fantasy – is needed to transform appearances into meaning. The veil invites us to slow down, to imagine unexpected connections and to question what we see. In this sense, veiled images become re-veiled: charged with a latent truth that viewers themselves must learn to perceive.

Alessandro Cerchier

The exhibition Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice

Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, exhibition view, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. © Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Photo Adriano Mura

The text has been translated in English using AI
by

Alessandro Cerchier

March 19 · 26
No place like home: Benni Bosetto and her haunted domesticity in Milan

IT

In her first institutional exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Benni Bosetto demonstrates her capacity to convincingly adapt to a larger scale without losing sense of intimacy and fragility. Exploring questions of human experience and identity through drawing, sculpture, installation, and performance, the artist presents a new project in which daydreaming becomes an act of resistance.

Rebecca, the exhibition focused on the artistic practice of Benni Bosetto (Merate, 1987) and curated by Fiammetta Griccioli, takes its title from Daphne du Maurier’s gothic novel and its cinematic incarnation by Alfred Hitchcock. The exhibition space, the Shed of the Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, is divided in three sections: “la guancia” [The cheek], “la pancia” [The belly] and “il cuore” [The heart], transforming the venue into a large-scale installation. At the core of Bosetto’s practice lies a body, specifically, a woman’s body. Here, dissected, it took hold of the industrial site turning it into a novelesque domestic interior filled with curtains and lace.
Visitors step through a spaceship-like curtain into an environment of painted and veiled walls, doors laid flat on the floor, dimly lit tables and small islands with chairs. The setting conveys a lingering presence of a woman, she left her traces – kisses, sketches, drawings. Two lace colossi (Gli occhi) recall the ghostly couple from Virginia Woolf’s A Haunted House. Like one of Woolf’s ghosts, the viewer searches for a hidden treasure: “They’re looking for it; they’re drawing the curtain […] And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open.”

Benni Bosetto, Rebecca. Exhibition view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio

BENNI BOSETTO AT THE PIRELLI HANGARBICOCCA IN MILAN

As in the novel, the treasure is found in the drawing room – quite literally. Bosetto’s medium of preference is drawing, with a particular emphasis on manual labour and the temporality of making. The Shed, once a centre of industrial labour, echoes Bosetto’s own hands-on practice. Each piece is created entirely by hand over the course of several months. She covered the walls with hundreds of strips of paper (Le cellule), featuring erotic sketches of witches, flowers and butterflies. Her imagery is surrealistic, sensual. The artist gently guides the viewer with labyrinths and curtained passages conveying intimate stories – like one at the very entrance, mark of the lips in a veiled hallway, recalling the way Bosetto used to kiss the doorframe when coming home as a kid.
What strikes the most is how the industrial environment has been transformed by these handmade papers. In the novel Rebecca, the house acts as an autonomous force that influences its inhabitants. Here, the exhibition space exerts a similar hold, taking on the form of the body itself. The papers encircling visitors contribute most significantly to such perception, as they seem to haunt those inside the venue. Small sculptures, as Easter eggs, appear in unexpected locations and serve both as guides and as remnants of human presence.

Benni Bosetto, Le cellule (detail), 2026. Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio

THE WORKS BY BENNI BOSETTO

Perhaps it is no coincidence that Rebecca features the series of installations in the form of horizontal doors. Le Porte, positioned at the core of the space and emphasising the project’s centrality, remain concealed within a cloistered area formed by curtains. Their horizontal arrangement disrupts our proprioception ‒ we enter a different relationship with space, like Alice in Wonderland. Behind the half-open doors ‒ furry objects, ceramic bas-reliefs depicting body parts, unidentifiable hybrid ceramic forms, and tomatoes as symbols of desire and vitality. These doors embody sensuality, sexuality, and longing. Similar associations arise from the orgone accumulator I just know that something good is going to happen, whose structure echoes Wilhelm Reich’s prototype device concentrating universal life force. Erotic undertones invite retreat into intimate privacy of the cabinet, offering an escape from the crowded space. Muted tones, neutral surfaces. Yet, Bosetto carefully infuses the venue’s areas with personality. As one wanders along its decorated walls, there is a subtle voyeuristic pleasure in deciphering and finding its fugitive traces. The hangar transforms into an intimate chamber, and the spectator a quiet scavenger in search of the Other’s presence. Ultimately, the exhibition prompts reflection: do we inhabit the spaces, or do they inhabit us?

Luiza Gareeva

Benni Bosetto’s exhibition at the Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan

Benni Bosetto, La bocca (detail), 2022. Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Tango (II version), 2026. Performance and installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Tango (II version), 2026. Performance and installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Porta della spogliarellista, 2026. Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Rebecca. Exhibition view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Rebecca. Exhibition view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Gli occhi, 2026. Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Confessionale animale, 2026. Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Rebecca. Exhibition view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Rebecca. Exhibition view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Corridoio orgonico (detail), 2026. Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Porta pannocchia, 2026. Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Corridoio orgonico (detail), 2026. Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Rebecca. Exhibition view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Rebecca. Exhibition view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Porta mollica – la contrabbandiera (particolare), 2026. Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Rebecca. Exhibition view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Porta pomi d’oro (particolare), 2026. Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Rebecca. Exhibition view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Rebecca. Exhibition view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Porta sussurri (particolare), 2026. Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Benni Bosetto, Le cellule (detail), 2026. Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2026. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
by

Luiza Gareeva

March 19 · 26
John Giorno’s poetry and art on show in Bologna

IT

The MAMbo ‒ Museum of Modern Art in Bologna is hosting “John Giorno: The Performative Word”, curated by Lorenzo Balbi, in the Sala delle Ciminiere: the first institutional retrospective dedicated to the radical poet and artist of the New York avant-garde.

How can a line of poetry be displayed in an art exhibition? This is one of the central issues of John Giorno: The Performative Word, at the MAMbo ‒ Museum of Modern Art in Bologna until May 3rd, 2026. Curated by Lorenzo Balbi and organized into thematic sections, the exhibition explores all the main themes of John Giorno’s (New York, 1936-2019) artistic production, starting with the relatively recent Perfect Flowers series and moving on to the numerous and well-known Rainbow Paintings, the prints of his poems, and an extended excerpt from Andy Warhol’s over five hours long film, in which the poet starred. Alongside all of this, there is an “archive” section that records his experiences of activism and spiritual formation, and the video THANX 4 NOTHING, made in 2015 in collaboration with his husband, Ugo Rondinone. The heart of the exhibition, however, is Dial-A-Poem, an interactive work in which John Giorno, through a telephone number to be dialed, gathered recordings of the voices of poets, artists, musicians and intellectuals reading their own compositions available to anyone who wanted to listen to them. The work is presented both in its American version, produced in 1969, and in other later international versions, including the Italian one, specifically created for the exhibition, with the participation of Antonella Anedda, Tomaso Binga, Milo De Angelis, Valerio Magrelli and Patrizia Valduga, among many others.

John Giorno: The Performative Word, exhibition view, MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Sala delle Ciminiere. Courtesy MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna. Photo by Ornella De Carlo

THE CURATORIAL APPROACH OF THE EXHIBITION

The marked eclecticism that characterized Giorno’s artistic and poetic production is also reflected in the curatorial choices aimed at finding effective exhibition solutions for works that are not entirely conventional, such as those by John Giorno. Some rooms in the exhibition follow a linear layout, emphasizing the intense colors of the works, while in others the walls are filled with paintings and texts, in an overload that mirrors the insistent repetitions of Giorno’s poems and the chaotic energy of his performances, so that the atmosphere of the exhibition complements the visual impact of the works. While, overall, the curatorial and exhibition choices reflect Giorno’s approach to art, it is in the large central hall dedicated to the Dial-A-Poem project that the radical and energetic spirit of Giorno’s poetics fails, and, instead of the overabundance of writing and colors, there is a large, empty, minimalist room containing only rotary dial telephones and, on the wall, the names of the poets and artists who lent their voices. In this space, which should make the reconstruction of a certain intellectual atmosphere one of its strengths, a significant issue is due to the lack of any caption that could convey the importance of the participants involved in Dial-A-Poem, thus risking leaving the viewer in front of a long list of names on a wall.

John Giorno with Dial-A-Poem, 1970. Courtesy Giorno Poetry Systems

JOHN GIORNO’S EXHIBITION AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART IN BOLOGNA

Overall, the exhibition paints a dynamic and captivating picture of John Giorno’s lively conceptual world and of the poetics of the New York avant-garde to which he belonged and which constantly resurfaces in his works, like a hymn of tireless vitality expressed in a multitude of forms ‒ poetry, art, performance, music, spirituality, love, sex, drunkenness and drug use. An artistic practice and a way of life embodied in the words painted by Giorno himself on the large canvas You got to burn to shine.

Elia Castello

The exhibition John Giorno: The Performative Word at the MAMbo

John Giorno: The Performative Word, exhibition view, MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Sala delle Ciminiere. Courtesy MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna. Photo by Ornella De Carlo
John Giorno: The Performative Word, exhibition view, MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Sala delle Ciminiere. Courtesy MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna. Photo by Ornella De Carlo
John Giorno: The Performative Word, exhibition view, MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Sala delle Ciminiere. Courtesy MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna. Photo by Ornella De Carlo
John Giorno: The Performative Word, exhibition view, MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Sala delle Ciminiere. Courtesy MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna. Photo by Ornella De Carlo
John Giorno: The Performative Word, exhibition view, MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Sala delle Ciminiere. Courtesy MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna. Photo by Ornella De Carlo
John Giorno: The Performative Word, exhibition view, MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Sala delle Ciminiere. Courtesy MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna. Photo by Ornella De Carlo
John Giorno: The Performative Word, exhibition view, MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Sala delle Ciminiere. Courtesy MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna. Photo by Ornella De Carlo
John Giorno: The Performative Word, exhibition view, MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Sala delle Ciminiere. Courtesy MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna. Photo by Ornella De Carlo
John Giorno: The Performative Word, exhibition view, MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Sala delle Ciminiere. Courtesy MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna. Photo by Ornella De Carlo
John Giorno: The Performative Word, exhibition view, MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Sala delle Ciminiere. Courtesy MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna. Photo by Ornella De Carlo
John Giorno: The Performative Word, exhibition view, MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Sala delle Ciminiere. Courtesy MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna. Photo by Ornella De Carlo
John Giorno: The Performative Word, exhibition view, MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Sala delle Ciminiere. Courtesy MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna. Photo by Ornella De Carlo
John Giorno with Dial-A-Poem, 1970. Courtesy Giorno Poetry Systems

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Elia Castello

March 12 · 26
Beyond the white cube: context as a perceptive device

IT

For a long time, the white cube has been considered the ideal space for contemporary art: neutral, silent, isolated from the world. Decades later, this exhibition system not only appears outdated, but has been called into question by a radical evidence: there is no aesthetic experience that is not situated, corporeal, influenced by its historical and cultural context.

The white cube is an exhibition model that became established after World War II, characterized by white walls and uniform lighting, designed to present the work as autonomous and timeless. Research in the field of neuroaesthetics — in the wake of the discipline pioneered by neurobiologist Semir Zeki — has shown that aesthetic judgment is not formed in a pure mental space, but emerges from the interaction between environment, body, cognitive expectations, memories, and reminiscences. Recent studies show that the exhibition context significantly influences the perception and evaluation of a work, modifying neurophysiological parameters such as brain activity, heart rate, and eye movements. In other words, what we see is never truly separable from where we see it. BrainSigns — a spin-off of La Sapienza University in Rome since 2010 — uses neuroscience to analyze brain and physiological signals, producing value in the field of neuroaesthetics. Neuroaesthetic experiments are usually conducted in unconventional exhibition contexts. Research has shown, for example, that identical works can be evaluated significantly differently depending on where they are presented or the preliminary information provided to visitors. Among these, the attribution of authorship plays a meaningful role: it has emerged that prior knowledge of authorship — whether human or artificial intelligence — has a decisive influence on the final aesthetic judgment.

NEW CURATORIAL PRACTICES

In light of these facts, the abandonment of exhibition practices that reproduced the white cube and the preference for historically connoted places, hybrid environments, and temporary architectures cannot be dismissed as a curatorial trend. Rather, it is an attempt to rethink the aesthetic experience as an embodied experience, as suggested by Vittorio Gallese and David Freedberg, respectively leading figures in research on mirror neurons and in the theorization of embodied simulation applied to art. In these spaces, the context is not a neutral backdrop, but an active variable that dialogues with the work and the viewer. Brian O’Doherty spoke of the white cube as the dwelling place of the Eye, yet the viewer is not just a gaze, but a body sensitive to different types of stimuli, not only visual, traversed by automatic reactions, cognitive biases, and emotional responses that precede any conscious interpretation. Ignoring this dimension means continuing to design exhibitions for a subject that does not exist. In this scenario, curators are called upon to take responsibility: to recognize that every exhibition choice creates a set of conditions that guide perception, attention, and judgment. Being a curator, then, means being a designer of the artistic experience for viewers-interlocutors.

THE MEDIATING ROLE OF THE ART CURATOR

Studies on interaction with space include the analysis of relationships between multiple actors, and research has yielded results that herald changes both in the way art is produced and in the way it is presented to the public: on the one hand, artists are involved, moving from studio or laboratory production to on-site production; on the other hand, users are involved as a fundamental subject in the triangular relationship with the work and the artist. Space is therefore the container in which this relationship takes place. Over time, the role of the curator in the art world has taken on particular importance precisely because of their role as mediators: a bridge between the creative process of artists and the experiential needs of visitors to an exhibition, museum, or any environment where it is possible to enjoy an artistic experience. One exhibition that changed the way we think about art, how it is presented, and the role of those who organize it is Live in Your Head. When Attitudes Become Form, curated by Harald Szeemann in 1969 at the Kunsthalle in Bern, a neutral modernist space that Szeemann used as a testing ground, encouraging artists to produce works directly on site, making the environment part of the exhibition itself. That space influenced the artists and the works produced; if the exhibition had been organized in another environment, the works and the final result would have changed. The idea that art is not only the finished work but the entire process was therefore explored, in which the curator takes on a creative role in relation to the artist.

HOW TO RECONFIGURE THE SPACE OF AN EXHIBITION

Rethinking exhibition spaces today, not only for contemporary art but also for the rearrangement of museum collections, means designing perceptive environments, not simple containers. Taking into account the five senses, not just sight, means, for example, working with light as a variable and non-uniform material, capable of generating areas of attention and pause; with sound, constructing acoustic landscapes that guide the movement of the body in space; with touch, through materials, surfaces, and temperatures that make the space experienceable even beyond vision and also erase that feeling of distance that overwhelms the visitor; on smell, often overlooked but a powerful activator of memory and emotional states; and finally on the temporal rhythm of the visit, which involves the internal sense of the body and duration, helping to combat the so-called “museum fatigue,” when the attention span drops dramatically between the beginning and end of the visit. From this perspective, setting up an exhibition means calibrating, creating conditions in which the work can resonate with a situated body, restoring the aesthetic experience to its sensory and cognitive complexity.
Contexts “speak”, adding a discourse to the work, sometimes completing its meaning, other times being the source of inspiration for its very genesis. Art always happens in relation to a place, a body, a situation. Perhaps it is not a question of abandoning the white cube totally or forever, but of ceasing to believe it is neutral.

Alice Longo

Photo credit School for Curatorial Studies Venice

The text has been translated using AI

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Alice Longo

January 29 · 26
Ordet in Milan hosts Jack O’Brien’s unfinished objects

IT

Jack O’Brien’s first solo show in Italy – held at Ordet in Milan – led visitors through industrialized landscapes, ruins, and architectural traces of a bygone Renaissance, in the wake of suspended potentialities and the physicality of materials.

On 20 November 2025, Ordet in Milan hosted the closing of A Formality, the first solo exhibition in Italy by Jack O’Brien (London, 1993), whose practice is grounded in an extensive overwriting of meanings. Various materials – often sourced from consumer culture – are assembled and stripped of context to generate new narratives. Heat-shrink film, epoxy resins, fabrics, cable ties, and plastics come together in the large-scale installations with which O’Brien experiments. These works amplify the monumentality of his gestures of assembly, carried out both during and after the making process. Ordet became the stage for a story shaped by a desire to experiment.

Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi

A FORMALITY: THE CURATORSHIP

The curatorial project presents itself as an unfinished tool, made of gears and rollers that evoke a factory in the making, suspended in time. As you enter, a sharp smell reminiscent of glues and machine plastics fills the air. Both alluring and slightly unsettling, the scent sparks curiosity. Two intersecting black conveyor belts stretch diagonally across the space, creating a narrative punctuated by white objects – like small statues resting on plinths. Yet the mechanism is broken; nothing moves, and the process comes to a halt. The white – of the walls and of the sculptures – recalls a past sense of sacredness, emphasized by draped fabrics soaked in plaster and cement. The object is static, yet always in flux. Black, in contrast, brings us back to a performative present, to a consumerist society driven by productivity and perpetual motion. The transformation of the industrial object turns the exhibition experience into a moment of contemplation and reflection, far from the relentless efficiency of today. What the artist creates is not a finished object; it is an embodiment of possibilities, a gesture toward times that feel ancient, without slipping into didacticism. Reaching the second floor, one encounters a composition of pipes and drapery recalling columns with soft, fluid forms. The curatorial choice to exhibit the sculptures as though they were part of an assembly line reinforces the artist’s poetics. The reconfiguration of the object becomes increasingly urgent. The exhibition implicitly brings these aspects to the surface, making us participants in an infinite mechanism of which we become part, almost without noticing.

Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi

ORDET AND LENZ PRESS

Founded in 2019 by Edoardo Bonaspetti and Stefano Cernuschi, Ordet is not only an exhibition space but also an experimental laboratory and cultural hub. Following its relocation in February 2025, exhibitions now unfold within a 250-square-meter open space. The former garage, renovated by Ballabio & Bava, is now ready to host new approaches to display and installation. Its white-cube features make it an ideal terrain for exploring previously uncharted artistic possibilities. Located on Via Filippino Lippi 4, Ordet is connected to the first bookshop of the publishing house Lenz Press – founded by Bonaspetti – which offers catalogues, monographs, theory books, and artists’ publications on contemporary art, photography, architecture, and design. This creates a synergy between two entities that, since 2019, have pursued a constantly evolving project driven by experimentation and contemporaneity.

Maddalena Domenghini

Ordet in Milan

Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, Metalepsis (2025). Courtesy of the artist, Ginny on Frederick, and Matthew Brown Gallery. Photo: Benjamin Deakin
Jack O’Brien, Inversion (2025). Courtesy of the artist, Ginny on Frederick, and Matthew Brown Gallery. Photo: Benjamin Deakin
Jack O’Brien, Objection (2025). Courtesy of the artist, Ginny on Frederick, and Matthew Brown Gallery. Photo: Benjamin Deakin
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Jack O’Brien, A Formality, installation view, Ordet, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Ordet. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
by

Maddalena Domenghini

November 27 · 25
The forms of water: art, research, and activism at S.a.L.E Docks in Venice

IT

Until 23 November 2025, the spaces of S.a.L.E Docks in Venice host “Contested Waters”, the exhibition curated by ɪ-ʏ ʜꜱɪᴇʜ. With the organizational collaboration of the Hong-Gah Museum and the support of organizations such as the Taiwan National Culture and Arts Foundation, RSI Group, Lion Pencil CO, and NICHE – Center for Environmental Human Sciences at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, the exhibition explores water and its role – real and metaphorical –in contemporary ecological and social issues.

Contested Waters brings together five works in the exhibition running until 23 November 2025 at S.a.L.E Docks in Venice. Installations and videos introduce the water as a physical but also political place, in its sense of a narrative device. This perspective creates bridges between areas that are distant in terms of aesthetics, culture and nature, finding a common denominator in water – and, more broadly, in the concept of liquid. On display, scientific, geopolitical, and metaphorical aspects blur their boundaries through the works of artists who describe their reality and imagination.

Contested Waters, exhibition view, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice 2025. Photo by Rebecca Canavesi

THE WORKS ON DISPLAY AT S.A.L.E. DOCKS IN VENICE

No body makes its own bodies (2024), the sculpture created by Chen Chen Yu and placed at the centre of the exhibition space, explores the body as a viscous composition of ideologies. The artist’s multimedia practice encompasses an interest in the fluidity of identity, offering reflections on gender and the material expressions of typically contemporary sensations, such as anxiety and desire. The flow and the body are also key elements in the installation presented at S.a.L.E. Docks, where a shapeless mass, located in the centre of a cage, melts into murky waters. The fading of the body, its construction and its disappearance convey the image of the fragility of today’s individual: glued to ideology, they appear as a mass ready to melt away.
Ranjit Kandalgaonkar’s decade-long research, on the other hand, finds in water a fertile ground for connections and invisible interests in the shipbuilding industry. In [shipbreak_dossier] (2009-2025), the artist collects and maps hidden and opaque dynamics, revealing the phases of shipbuilding and demolition. The latter phase is often characterised by obscure and neglected data that conceal large-scale speculation.

Ranjit Kandalgaonkar, [shipbreak_dossier] (2009–2025), installation view, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice 2025. Photo by Rebecca Canavesi

Jui-Lan YAO’s work connects scientific research and participatory practices. The installation The Replicate Blue.eu (2023-2025), on display in the exhibition and commissioned by the Hong-Gah Museum, highlights the artist’s investigations in the intertidal zones – between high and low tide levels – of Kinmen Island, opposite the Taiwan Strait. Jui-Lan YAO weaves together an ecological reflection on the exploitation of biotechnology, with particular reference to limulids: defined as “living fossils”, they are often used in medical material sterilisation tests.
No single drop of water diminishes in the world (2024-2025) by Szu-Ni Wen and Chia-Hsuan Sun considers water as a necessary resource, triggering a reflection on the quantity of resources present on Earth. In fact, to quote the curatorial text referring to the work, “the water we drink today is the same water that dinosaurs drank”.
Finally, behind a curtain that divides the large continuous space of Magazzini del Sale, Tzuan Wu’s The Sirens (2022-2025) presents a different kind of water, less scientific and more mythological. The inhuman, the liminal, the blurring of boundaries between a child underwater and a mermaid become fluid. The work, with its apocalyptic aftertaste, marks the end of the exhibition, in a deeper space, far from the entrance. It is no coincidence that the exhibition ends with a metaphorical and superimposable “end of the world”, given the themes dealt with in the other works.

Tzuan Wu, The Sirens (2022–2025), installation view, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice 2025. Photo by Rebecca Canavesi

ACTIVISM AND CURATORSHIP

Contested Waters traces a path towards the unknown, a journey that begins with careful and attentive scientific research, passes through the ideological contradictions of contemporary society, and arrives at fiction. The exhibition speaks of water through a multiplicity and stratification of meaning, suggesting investigations in various forms: economic, ecological, political, metaphorical. The reflections are characterised by water as a content and media factor, but also by a spirit of struggle and participation, necessary in a space such as S.a.L.E. Docks.
The different languages on display allow visitors to develop knowledge and awareness of various specific and sectoral case studies, in which art and science coexist. The combination of these parts gives shape to an investigation that is not limited to aesthetics in order to generate awareness, but brings to the surface data that is often obscured by larger logics. Contested Waters evokes stories of waters that are not neutral: the discourse then becomes political, concrete and participatory, in line with the principles that animate S.a.L.E. Docks, an independent venue for contemporary arts founded in 2007 by a group of activists following the occupation of one of the Magazzini del Sale.

Rebecca Canavesi

Contested Waters

Chen Chen YU, No body makes its own bodies (2025), installation view, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice 2025. Photo by Rebecca Canavesi
Chen Chen YU, No body makes its own bodies (2025), installation view, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice 2025. Photo by Rebecca Canavesi
Jui-Lan YAO, The Replicate Blue.eu (2023–2025), installation view, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice 2025. Photo by Rebecca Canavesi
Ranjit Kandalgaonkar, [shipbreak_dossier] (2009–2025), installation view, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice 2025. Photo by Rebecca Canavesi
Contested Waters, exhibition view, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice 2025. Photo by Rebecca Canavesi
Contested Waters, exhibition view, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice 2025. Photo by Rebecca Canavesi
Tzuan Wu, The Sirens (2022–2025), installation view, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice 2025. Photo by Rebecca Canavesi
Tzuan Wu, The Sirens (2022–2025), installation view, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice 2025. Photo by Rebecca Canavesi
Tzuan Wu, The Sirens (2022–2025), installation view, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice 2025. Photo by Rebecca Canavesi

The text has been translated in English using AI
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Rebecca Canavesi

November 20 · 25