Le ferite di Milano. How Art Heals History Through Creativity
A powerful exhibition at Triennale di Milano explores ten tragic events that shaped the city, using art to mend collective memory.
Sparse and austere in its setup, yet powerful in the essentiality with which it brings back to memory some of the most painful events that have marked Milan. A drawing, a word, or a number; paper folded and refolded onto itself; a punctured balloon; a white zipper; a sheet that transforms into a sculpture—this is all it takes to outline the unfathomable mystery of violence. An ambitious, and perhaps even necessary, project is being presented at the Triennale di Milano until March 30. Because if it is true, as Daniel Libeskind—architect of Ground Zero in New York and the Jewish Museum in Berlin—says, that “trauma is not something that can be healed, because it is always there,” it is equally true that “what we can do is confront the wound with a certain awareness and resolve, so that we may envision a future that is different from simply being haunted by the ghosts of the past.”
Mending the fabric of history through artistic expression is the intent of the exhibition Le ferite di Milano, curated by Spazio Taverna, the studio founded by Ludovico Pratesi and Marco Bassan, who explain:
“This is the second chapter of an event that took place in Rome (under the title The Wounds of Rome) in February 2023 at Galleria Mattia de Luca. The core idea is to stitch back together, through art, the lacerations left by tragic events. It is not an exhibition about the city’s history, but rather a reflection on ten dramatic moments that, in one way or another, have reshaped the face of Milan and whose memory still lingers in the city’s collective subconscious.”
Francesco Arena, 14 gennaio 2025
Ruth Beraha, La Nebbia
Camilla Alberti, la porta blu, 2025
Stefano Arienti, Attentato alla fiera, 2025
For this exhibition, ten artists—each with a deep connection to Milan, either by birth or through their artistic journey—were invited to reinterpret a specific historical event through their own creative language, starting from the same Amatruda sheet of paper. The participating artists are Camilla Alberti (Milan, 1994), Francesco Arena (Brindisi, 1978), Stefano Arienti (Asola, 1961), Ruth Beraha (Milan, 1986), Valentina Furian (Venice, 1989), Marcello Maloberti (Codogno, 1966), Liliana Moro (Milan, 1961), Diego Perrone (Asti, 1970), Paola Pivi (Milan, 1971), and Luca Vitone (Genoa, 1964). Together, they compose a collective narrative structured as a hypothetical journey back in time, where at each stop, the artwork materializes the intersection of life and death.
The exhibition follows a chronological order, beginning with the execution of Italian patriot Amatore Sciesa in 1851 and continuing with the Milan Riots of May 6–9, 1898. It moves through the explosion at the Kursaal Diana Theater in 1921, the Piazza Giulio Cesare bombing in 1928, the Piazza Fontana massacre in 1969, and the murder of Commissioner Luigi Calabresi in 1972. The timeline also includes the killing of Walter Tobagi in 1980, the Tangentopoli corruption investigation of 1992, the Via Palestro bombing in 1993, and concludes with the most recent and tragic incident: the 2001 Linate airport disaster. The result is a transgenerational narrative in which each artist, through diverse forms, content, and methods, expands the memory of these brutal events across time and space, inviting viewers to engage with them more consciously.
Marcello Maloberti, Sopravvissuto, 2025
“All these wounds we have selected,” concludes Bassan, “are, in a way, self-inflicted wounds—tragedies that Milan brought upon itself and perhaps could have avoided. Bringing them to light through the work of artists means surfacing them from the depths of the unconscious, in order to heal them and attempt to integrate them into our existence.”
Cover Image: Camilla Alberti, la porta blu, 2025
An art critic and curator, she writes for Italian and foreign magazines with a focus on contemporary art and attention to fashion, design and photography. An independent curator, she has produced photography and contemporary art exhibitions, art books and exhibition catalogues. She teaches History of Fashion and Text Methodology at the IED in Milan, where she is also a consultant for the area of artistic research. In 2014, he launched his blog thedummystales.com, a cultural destination where art and fashion have been dialoguing in unison, and uninterruptedly, for more than 10 years.
