Salone del Mobile 2025 Events

Es Devlin. Library of Light

April 7 th - April 21 st 2025 09:00 - 21:00 (CEST)
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Library of Light is a Salone project in collaboration with the Pinacoteca di Brera and with the contribution of Milan based publishing house, Feltrinelli.


In the year of Euroluce, the Salone del Mobile has commissioned a monumental kinetic installation by Es Devlin, the British artist and designer, known as a ‘poet of light’. The work is being created within one of Milan’s most venerable landmarks: the Pinacoteca di Brera. The installation reflects a phrase by Umberto Eco that came to the artist's mind as she climbed the tall shelves of the Braidense National Library: “Books are the compass of the mind, they point to countless worlds yet to be explored.” Devlin’s luminous rotating sculpture is located in the centre of the 17th century Cortile d'Onore, which connects the Pinacoteca di Brera, the Braidense National Library and the Academy of Fine Arts. It is an 18 meter diameter revolving cylindrical sculpture formed of illuminated book shelves containing over 2.000 volumes. During the day, while the structure turns, the angled mirrored plane at the top of Devlin’s cylindrical sculpture will reflect the sun’s light into the columns, the statues of the portico and parts of the building never previously penetrated by the rays of the sun. At night, its illuminated structure creates shadow plays on the walls of the courtyard.
 

Find out more, read the in-depth article

Pinacoteca di Brera – Cortile d’Onore
A project by Salone del Mobile in collaboration with Pinacoteca di Brera and La Grande Brera With contribution of Feltrinelli
Free entrance – 9 am – 9 pm

 

Talk

Tuesday 8th April
7 pm, in English
Weaving Indian Art
Vinita Chaitanya, Interior Designer, Founder Prism
Urmila Chakraborty, Writer, Specialist of Patachitra Folk Art
Malika Verma, Founder Border&Fall
Moderator: Cristina Kiran Piotti, Italian-Indian Journalist and Consultant

Motifs, tapestries, weaving, embroidery, interweaving. For a long time considered "just" a refined craftsmanship of excellence from the South of the world, but now increasingly recognised as an art form in its own right. In particular, in India, textiles are deeply intertwined with cultural expression, historical memory, gender emancipation and local identities. The world of design today takes on a fundamental role in literally weaving new sensitivities and fresh looks at these both ancient and contemporary practices.

 

Wednesday 9th April
7 pm, in Italian
C'era una volta il corpo
with Walter Siti, Writer, Literary Critic and Essayist Curated by Feltrinelli

 

Thursday 17th April
6 pm, in Italian
Thought for Humans.
Matilde Cassani, Artist and Designer
Luca Cipelletti, Architect and Museographer
Margherita Palli, Set designer
Moderator Annalisa Rosso, Editorial Director e Cultural Events Advisor, Salone del Mobile.Milano

The theme of the 2025 Salone del Mobile.Milano communication campaign – Thought for Humans. – becomes an opportunity for a broad and multidisciplinary reflection on the role of the body in space. An exploration of the emotional and sensory aspects conveyed by direct physical experience, capable of opening new interpretative keys also for the world of design. Through different but profoundly connected practices – art, theatre, museography – a new way of thinking, inhabiting and questioning the centrality of the human being is investigated.

 

Ph. Es Devlin Studio

Speaker
Matilde Cassani

Matilde Cassani Studio operates in the area where architecture, installations and design events intersect. Its work is inspired by the spatial implications of cultural pluralism, and has been exhibited in a great many institutions and events, including the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York (2011); three editions of the Venice Architecture Biennale (2012, 2014 and 2018); the Victoria and Albert Museum (2015); the Oslo Triennale (2016); the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2017); Manifesta 12 (2018) and Triennale Milano (2019).
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Speaker
Vinita Chaitanya

Vinita Chaitanya, Founder Prism, raccoglie successi dal 1988 e ben riflette il branding personale della sua fondatrice. Chaitanya descrive il suo stile come “classico contemporaneo”: un mix euforico di sete suntuose, fantasie paisley tradizionali, eccellenti artefatti indiani e oggetti occidentali tra i più desiderabili. Nota come influencer, compare spesso sulle copertine e tra le pagine di riviste come Architectural Digest ed Elle Decor, e spesso partecipa a giurie ed eventi nel mondo del design. Gestisce anche una charity school nel distretto di Kodagu.
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Moderator
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Walter Siti

Writer, Literary Critic and Essayist
Walter Siti is one of Italy’s most distinguished writers and intellectuals. He edited the complete works of Pier Paolo Pasolini for Mondadori’s Meridiani series, and is the author of the podcast Perché Pasolini? He has written novels that have left their mark on more than one generation, including Paradise Overload (2006) and Il Contagio (2008). He won the Strega Prize in 2013 for Resistere Non Serve a Niente. His latest book is C’era Una Volta il Corpo, published by Feltrinelli.
 

Ph. Stefano Cianci
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Annalisa Rosso

Contemporary design specialist. She is currently Editorial Director and Cultural Events Advisor at Salone del Mobile.Milano, and Director of The Euroluce International Lighting Forum. Among the projects she conceived and developed for Salone del Mobile are the exhibition "Interiors by David Lynch. A Thinking Room" in Milan and the performative installation “The Orbit's Orbit” by Matilde Cassani in Shanghai. She has curated talks featuring speakers such as Shigeru Ban, Francis Kéré, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and John Pawson.
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Moderator