Triennale Milano launches Inequalities: When Design Becomes Conscience
Some say exhibitions can speak. Inequalities, the 24th International Exhibition at Triennale Milano, doesn’t just speak — it provokes, questions, demands a response. Officially open to the public since May 13, this edition ideally concludes a curatorial trilogy that began with Broken Nature (2019) and continued with Unknown Unknowns (2022), bringing to a close a collective reflection that has grown increasingly urgent. Its theme: inequalities. Economic, gender-based, geographical, health-related, and access-driven. But also those that are invisible, transversal, embedded in bodies and cities.
“We’ll talk about inequalities through lives, spaces, and bodies,” declared Stefano Boeri, President of Triennale Milano, during the opening. And indeed, Inequalities doesn’t simply list systemic flaws — it stages them. It does so with contributions from leading voices in contemporary design and architecture — Norman Foster, Beatriz Colomina, Kazuyo Sejima, Theaster Gates — as well as collectives, museums, and institutions from 73 countries. A complex, layered ecosystem where differences become a form of knowledge, and fractures open up space for new kinds of design.
The opening night turned into a full-blown happening: across the institution’s halls and a garden alive with a DJ set, artists, designers, curators, students, patrons, institutions, and creatives mingled. Say Who photographers captured the faces and atmosphere of an evening that went far beyond the traditional idea of a “vernissage.” Among those photographed: the “hosts” Stefano Boeri, President of Triennale Milano, and Carla Morogallo, General Director of Triennale Milano; Lord Norman Foster; Mark Wigley; Hans Ulrich Obrist; Marcello Maloberti; Antonia Jannone; Gianfranco Maraniello; Fulvia and Elisa Mendini; Damiano Gullì; Marco Sammicheli; Luca Cipelletti; Nina Bassoli; Umberto Angelini; Nina Artioli; Simone Faressin and Andrea Trimarchi (Formafantasma); Iñaqui Carnicero; Gemma de Angelis Testa; and Luca Stoppini.
Already the evening before, on May 11, the exclusive preview for members of the Patron Program had set the tone. In a present shaped by distance and polarization, Inequalities dares to imagine a new, possible vocabulary: less hierarchical, more human. Where design is not decoration, but a tool to understand where we are — and where we might go next.
Photos: Ludovica Arcero, Alessio Ammannati, Andrea Sgambelluri, and Camilla Vazzoler
Text: Germano D’Acquisto
