On Saturday, 1 November 2025 at 6 pm, MAO is unveiling the third edition of Contemporary Expressions. The same evening, for Contemporary Night, the museum will remain open until 11 pm (last entry: 10 pm) with reduced admission of €12 to visit the permanent collection and the temporary exhibition The Soul Trembles.
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.
