Unseen Collaborations

Triennale Milano is taking part in the fourth edition of the London Design Biennale The Global Game: Remapping Collaborations (June 1–25) representing the Italian Pavilion with the exhibition Unseen Collaborations, curated by Marco Sammicheli, Director of Museo del Design Italiano at Triennale Milano, and Marilia Pederbelli, Triennale’s Curatorial Assistant.

This year’s Biennale, under the artistic direction of Aric Chen, General Director of the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, has asked participants to explore the theme of collaboration and the search for shared synergies in design and beyond. Triennale’s proposal, which will be exhibited at Somerset House in London together with those of more than 40 institutions from all over the world, is based on research conducted in the Triennale archives, highlighting the collaborative processes behind the designing of furnishings and interiors for Italian motor vessels and ocean liners in the first half of the 20th century. Conceived as authentic travelling exhibition pavilions, these projects played a crucial role not only in the inception of Italian design but also in presenting Italian design, artistic, and manufacturing culture to the world.

In the history of Italian design, large cruise ships stand as one of the earliest examples of multidisciplinary collaboration between technicians, engineers, builders, designers, artists, industrial sectors and craftsmen from across the country. On several occasions, such partnerships were at the centre of Triennale International Exhibitions, particularly between 1923 and 1951. Once decommissioned, motor vessels and transatlantic liners—typically Italian collective projects—are often dismantled on the shores of countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan or India, where they are converted into materials—including raw elements—that are put back on the market, regaining value through new generative processes. A bridge is thus built between different areas of the globe through an invisible and unforeseen collaboration that links the beginning and end of an artefact’s life cycle. The exhibition aims to open up new perspectives on the need for unprecedented collaboration on a global scale that takes into account the human, political and environmental impact of complex projects.

The exhibition takes the form of the reconstruction of an insidious and disturbing environment of site-specific works and installations. On display are: Liu Xiaodong’s Steel 6 (2016), a work resulting from the Chinese artist’s research into the everyday life of steelworkers in the large ship-breaking yards set up on the coast of Bangladesh; Philippe Tabet’s Order (2017), a series of three masks exploring three different industrial processes, namely aluminium casting, plywood gluing and ceramic glaze firing; two site-specific installations especially commissioned by the curators and created for this year’s London Design Biennale by Italian artist Davide Trabucco, who has traced a visual history of ship interior design, emphasizing the character of ships as mobile architectures and collective projects, and Melania Toma, who has created a large tapestry evoking the commissions that artists and designers received from ship-owners to decorate the communal and reception areas of cruise ships.

The exhibition at Somerset House is also accompanied by a display specially created by Davide Trabucco with an installation project by Ferruccio Laviani for the windows of Kartell’s flagship store in London, on Brompton Road, in which the artist reworks his own research and the themes proposed for the London Design Biennale.

This exhibition is Triennale’s third participation at the London Design Biennale: in 2016, the first edition of the event, it presented the exhibition White Flag, curated by Giorgio Camuffo and Silvana Annicchiarico, whereas 2018 saw Cesare Leonardi and Franca Stagi’s project L’architettura degli alberi, curated by Joseph Grima, Andrea Cavani, Giulio Orsini, Veronica Bastai and Archivio Architetto Cesare Leonardi.

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