This year, in conjunction with Artissima, MAO is delighted to present the third edition of Contemporary Expressions, the museum’s artist residency and site-specific commission project that invites contemporary artists to enter into dialogue with the collection and the ever-changing museum. The project offers fresh interpretations of the works in the museum’s collection, giving new meaning and voice to objects that have remained ‘silent’ for far too long, transforming the visitor experience. This work is carried out by artists, curators and culture professionals from across three continents.
In the museum’s Tibetan section, the filmmaker-artist duo Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam are presenting a sound installation that reinterprets the museum’s invaluable collection - unique in all the world - of fragments from the Densatil Monastery in central Tibet, renowned for its extraordinary reliquaries, richly decorated with refined bas-reliefs and Buddhist sculptures. Founded in 1198 and the centre of power of the Phagmo Drupa dynasty, which governed the country between the 14th and 15th centuries, the monastery was sacked and destroyed, along with more than 6,000 other religious institutions in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution, its treasures dispersed among museums and private collections across the world. Silently displayed in the museum’s galleries for nearly twenty years, these fragments have been brought to life by the artists’ installation. Through a personal narrative, it is now the sculpture of Virūḍhaka (Guardian King of the South) – one of the four statues that defended the cardinal points of the monastery’s multi-tiered stupas – that gives voice to the beauty and tragic history of Densatil. By what tortuous path did the Guardian King end up here, in the museum’s silent halls? And will he ever resume his religious duties in his homeland?
In the Chinese galleries, Korean artist Sunmin Park presents the video installation Pale Pink Universe (2025), alongside a new series of drawings that explore the relationship between nature and human activity, through the lens of agriculture and winemaking. The work grew out of a collaboration with the artist that began in conjunction with the exhibition Rabbit Inhabits the Moon, held at MAO in October 2024, and is part of the agreement between the museum and Artists for Frescobaldi. This agreement led to Sunmin Park’s invitation to participate in the artist residency organised and supported by the Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi at the CastelGiocondo estate in Montalcino as part of the seventh edition of Artisti per Frescobaldi, the patronage project for site-specific commissions conceived by Tiziana Frescobaldi and curated by Ludovico Pratesi, with the aim of promoting contemporary art through a profound dialogue with the local area. Pink Pale Universe is the result of the artist’s deep immersion in the Tuscan landscape – not only its natural and agricultural aspects, but also its historical and cultural ones. The moving images, accompanied by a soundtrack by musician Bojan Vuletic, alternate between the microscopic world of the particles inside a grape and the macroscopic world of the foliage and flowers that surround the grapevines. The work draws inspiration from a sonnet by the medieval stil novo (new style) poet Dino Frescobaldi (Florence, 1271 – c. 1316), which the artist recites as the narrator of the English translation of the text. The video and the three drawings, titled Pale Pink Universe-Bouquet Giocondo d 02, 03 e 04, are displayed at MAO in dialogue with the ancient Chinese funerary objects that surround the installation. The works were commissioned by Artists for Frescobaldi and the group of three drawings will become part of MAO’s permanent collection.
In the corridor between the China and the Japan galleries, Francesco Simeti is presenting a new site-specific installation that concludes the project he began at MAO during the first edition of Contemporary Expressions. Description Generale (A Historical Map of the Other) combines wallpaper, a series of fabric elements and light-emitting glass objects, taking the visitor on a journey that retraces a chapter in cultural history across geographic and temporary borders. The work, acquired for the MAO permanent collection, offers a radical rereading of the history of the Silk Road, intertwining reflections on the Orientalist appropriation of this ancient ‘Eurasian crossroads’. Description Generale (A Historical Map of the Other) draws inspiration from thousands of powerful, unconventional and ‘biting’ iconographic sources, including books, objects, sculptures, paintings and prints that document the history of a western taste that appropriates cultural elements from the Asian tradition. The result is a map in which the other is something exotic that is ‘judged’ and martyrised’ by the western gaze, which flattens everything out and re-presents it in images of an imperialist self. The light-emitting objects, created in collaboration with WonderGlass, are shaped like pagodas, achieving their form through a range of techniques: from the Murano tradition of blown glass, which lends them lightness, to more modern pouring methods, which bring out their materiality. Works that evoke the image of a timeless landscape that heightens the theatricality of the wallpaper and fabrics.
For the inauguration of the project on Saturday, 1 November, visitors will have the opportunity to participate in a performance of Taiwanese artist Lin Chi-Wei’s Tape Music, which has already been presented at leading international institutions including Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, the Venice Biennale and the Shanghai Biennale. Tape Music is part of the project Yue Ji 樂記, curated by Freya Chou, which explores the themes of loss, consolation and celebration as linked to mourning, in dialogue with MAO’s collection of Chinese ritual and funerary objects. The performance, scheduled for 6:30 pm, with two repeat performances at 7:15 and 8:00 pm, will involve visitors as active participants, inviting them to read the music scores inscribed on a long paper scroll, contributing to the creation of a complex, harmonic choir. The project also includes a limited-edition vinyl with recordings of the performance and pieces by James Hoff and dj sniff, accompanied by a booklet with texts by the artists and the curator. The project Yue Ji 樂記 was organised with the support of and in collaboration with the Taipei Representative Office in Italy.
From 2 November, visitors will be able to see the works with the purchase of an admission ticket to the permanent collection.
Artists’ Biographies
Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam
The Indian-Tibetan artists and filmmakers, Ritu Sarin and TenzingSonam, have been working together for more than thirty years. After completing their university studies in the United States, they worked as independent filmmakers in London for many years, returning to India in 1996. Tibet is a recurrent theme in their work, reflecting a commitment that is at once personal, political and artistic. They have created numerous prize-winning documentaries and video installations. Their documentary The Sun Behind the Clouds (2009) won the Vaclav Havel Award at the One World Film Festival in Prague. They also made the Tibetan feature film Dreaming Lhasa (2005), which was produced by Jeremy Thomas and Richard Gere and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006. Their recent feature film, The Sweet Requiem, was also premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018. Their video installations have been presented at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Savvy Contemporary (Berlin), the Istanbul Biennale, the Contour Biennale 8, the Busan Biennale, the Mori Art Museum, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary and Khoj Studios, Delhi, among other venues. Sarin and Sonam also direct the Dharamshala International Film Festival, one of India’s leading independent film festivals, which they founded in 2012.
Sunmin Park
Artist Sunmin Park, born in Seoul, is a visual artist known for her poetic exploration of perception and the natural world. Initially trained in biology, she later graduated in Sculpture from Seoul National University and studied under Rosemarie Trockel at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where she received the title of Meisterschülerin. Sunmin Park’s artistic practice exists in a space of oscillation—between micro and macro, civilization and nature, presence and absence. Working through both the minute observation of microscopes and the expansive vision of binoculars, her work spans photography, video, drawing, installation, publishing, and writing, probing the unseen and tracing relationships between internal perception and external reality. Today, her practice continues this poetic pursuit through visual means, exploring how nature transforms without narrative, and how such gaps and irregularities can give rise to unexpected meanings and imaginative possibilities. Recent commissioned works include Song of the Swamp – Sound Drifting, an immersive, participatory soundscape exhibited at the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Korea. Her work has been presented at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Leeum Museum of Modern Art, Seoul; Nam June Paik Art Center; Seoul Museum of Art; and Goethe-Institut Seoul. Internationally, she has exhibited at Museo d’Arte Orientale, Turin; Art Pavilion, Zagreb; Volvo Studio Milano; and the Seoul International ALT Cinema & Media Festival. She lives and works in Seoul.
Francesco Simeti
Artist Francesco Simeti, born in Palermo in 1968, is known for his site-specific installations, which capture they eye with their extraordinary aesthetic beauty. A closer look, however, reveals the complexity of the underlying context. Simeti appropriates images, illustrations and iconographic references, raising questions about the real nature of this imagery and its impact on contemporary society. Public art plays a fundamental role in his practice. In the United States, he has worked on projects commissioned by Percent for Art and Public Art for Public Schools in New York and Multnomah County Oregon and has created permanent installations for the subways in Brooklyn and Chicago. In Italy, he has worked with Atitolo on the programme Nuovi Committenti and created an installation for that project in 2021 at Casa Giglio in Turin. He is currently working on a public art project for the Los Angeles Metro. His work is found in the collections of Fondazione Luigi Rovati, Milan; Museo del Novecento, Milan; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. He lives and works in New York. He is represented by the Francesca Minini gallery in Milan.
Lin Chi-Wei
Artist Lin Chi-Wei works across disciplines and has an academic background in French literature, cultural anthropology and media art. In the early 1990s, he co-founded the noise band Z.S.L.O and was head of programming for various alternative art festivals. At the same time, he explored religious music and art, in particular Taoist rituals and temple sculpture. His critical perspective on contemporary art practice was developed through these experiences, together with his work in the fields of noise performance and electronic music composition.
