Inequalities
Grenfell Next of Kin’s installation at Triennale Milano included quilts commemorating the 72 people killed in a 2017 fire in a North Kensington tower block as a result of state and corporate negligence (image: Alessandro Saletta and Agnese Bedini).
The entrance to Triennale Milano’s 24th International Exhibition, Inequalities, is strikingly numerical. The organic forms of information designer Federica Fragapane's sculptures and graphs document economic, social, biological and environmental disparities, introducing a focus on statistics that follows visitors throughout the exhibition. “We began by tackling [the topic] with data,” says Beatrice Balducci, who led the scientific coordination of the exhibition. “Not because data is neutral, just because we wanted to approach it in a scientific way to sharpen and transform it.”
For over a hundred years, the Triennale has proposed different themes through which to observe the world, with each edition aiming to reflect the great questions facing humanity. While the two previous iterations of the exhibition, Broken Nature (2019) and Unknown Unknowns (2023), interrogated human relationships with the natural world, the deep sea and outer space, Inequalities aims to give a more pragmatic perspective on the theme of environmental collapse. “The awareness of the structural character of the issue of inequalities is a sort of precondition for addressing the other epochal challenges facing the human species,” the Triennale’s president Stefano Boeri writes in the exhibition overview. “In recent years, in fact, we have become aware that it is no longer possible to promote a policy of environmental improvement, of reducing the damage of climate change and its effects on daily life, without considering to what extent those policies and actions accentuate or diminish the inequalities in our society.”
Federica Fragapane's sculptures and graphs use organic forms to document economic, social, biological and environmental disparities (image: Alessandro Saletta and Agnese Bedini).
The ground floor of the exhibition is dedicated to geopolitics, which is primarily explored through the lens of cities. Curated by Nina Bassoli, the exhibition begins with Grenfell Tower. Total System Failure, an installation curated and narrated by Grenfell Next of Kin, a group that advocates for the families of the 72 people killed in a 2017 fire in a North Kensington tower block as a result of state and corporate negligence. “This [project] is particularly important for us, because we thought that it was a very emblematic case in which inequalities are really layered over each other – we’re speaking about inequalities on an urban level, on an architectural level, on a social and political level,” Balducci says. Colourful quilts with hearts commemorating each victim of the fire hang alongside a short film that details the organisation’s advocacy work, including plans to turn the charred tower into a vertical garden, which have since been rejected in favour of demolishing the structure and creating a memorial on its site.
The Puerto Rico pavilion recreates the digital and physical architectures that played a role in the final hours of Neulisa “Alexa” Luciano, a homeless, Black trans woman who was shot to death (image: Alessandro Saletta and Agnese Bedini).
At the tail end of this ‘Cities’ section of the exhibition are a series of pavilions organised by intergovernmental organisation Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), which were designed by 19 different countries. “[The pavilions] have a kind of autonomy because we didn’t create them,” Balducci says. “They are a kind of a thermometer of what’s happening all over the world.” Here, the Puerto Rico pavilion, Once Upon Three Femisites, recreates the digital and physical architectures that played a role in the final hours of Neulisa “Alexa” Luciano, a homeless, Black trans woman who was shot to death after someone uploaded a viral Facebook post accusing her of using a hand mirror to spy on children under the stalls of a McDonald’s bathroom. In the pavilion, a toilet surrounded by mirrors recreates the bathroom, while the project’s accompanying Facebook video reflects the viral post that led to Alexa’s murder, and the curtains surrounding the toilet commemorate the spot where her body was found beside her tent. Curated by Regner Ramos, the pavilion critiques the lack of affordable housing and inclusive toilets, as well as the digital platforms that allow and encourage hate speech and misinformation.
The second floor of the exhibition is dedicated to biopolitics, a move which signals a transition towards looking at inequality in terms of diversity and difference, which can also be a source of richness. “We started to investigate inequalities from the standpoint of health, which is increasingly understood as a matter of equilibrium of our microbiome,” Balducci says. “And in our microbiome, diversity is actually vital.” Here, architects present visions of living in harmony with bacteria, such as Philippe Rahm's playground using soil from organic farms in Puglia, which aims to help Milanese children acquire the microbiome capable of responding to microbial infections as temperatures rise in the city. Nearby, the value of biodiversity is explored through projects such as designer Ori Orisun's amber-coloured lamps made out of insect-produced polymers that are blown into shapes that resemble honeycomb.
The Ministry of Togetherness represents one of five behaviours that can result in a longer lifespan, and offers a space where visitors can rest and play digital boardgames (image: Alessandro Saletta and Agnese Bedini).
At the end of the second floor are five pavilions or “ministries” that represent behaviours that can result in a longer lifespan, with each structure filled with the work of multiple designers. In the Ministry of Purpose, Studio Brynjar & Veronika's table with the legs of a sled embodies the skills and stories that gave meaning to the lives of Icelandic elders, while Konstantin Grcic's chaise longue prickling with selfie sticks in the Ministry of Sleep Equity pokes fun at the devices that distract us from rest. Over in the Ministry of Food Democracy, a wall of alcoholic-free beverages stands alongside Bethan Laura Wood's Aperitivo mirror, and running shoes, tap shoes, and rollerblades are displayed next to ornate walking sticks by Karimoku Furniture in the Ministry of Staying Active. The final pavilion, the Ministry of Togetherness, is filled with Martino Gamper chairs, offering a space where visitors can rest and play digital boardgames.
The exhibition advocates for equality while celebrating difference, focusing on systems while providing reflection points for individuals, and adds creative flourishes while still anchoring itself in empiricism. The resulting exhibits provide head-spinning changes in perspective, taking visitors from live feeds of Italy’s beavers to petri dishes of bacteria-filled rice, and from the sandy floors of Saudi Arabia’s pavilion to the video installation navigating the streets of Havana in Cuba’s pavilion. “The issue of increasing inequalities in humanity’s current condition calls for a plurality of perspectives and interpretative keys,” Boeri writes. “Looking at the world from the perspective of the exacerbation of inequalities leads us to observe the vastness of the differences in culture, faith, lifestyle and individual tendencies that make contemporary urban societies so heterogeneous and richly varied.”
Words Disegno