Curated sections

Organized by Fiera Milano, from April 3 to 6, 2025 at Allianz MiCo, miart, Milan’s international modern and contemporary art fair, returns.

The twenty-ninth edition welcomes 179 galleries from 31 countries and 5 continents, divided into three sections. Alongside Established, the fair’s main section, Emergent and Portal stand out as the two curated sections of miart 2025.

Positioned at the entrance of the fair, to emphasize the central role of a new generation of gallerists within the art system, Emergent, curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini, offers a glimpse into experimental contemporary practices. With 25 galleries, the section continues a growing trend in recent years, featuring 19 international participants and 14 new entries.

Among the projects in the Emergent section: Ginny on Frederick (London) reveals the subtle interplay between materiality, personal experiences, and cultural critique through Jack O’Brien’s wall sculptures; Franz Kaka (Toronto) showcases historical references in Jennifer Carvalho’s figurative painting; Brunette Coleman (London) brings Oscar Enberg and Brianna Leatherbury into dialogue, exploring how objects can hold memory. Ligia Dias’ delicate sculptures are presented in a new site-specific installation by Lovay Fine Arts (Geneva), while a fountain created by Swiss artist Gina Fischli occupies the booth of zaza’ (Milan).

The possibilities of computer simulation are explored in Nate Boyce’s works at Ilenia (London); the mechanisms of desire are analyzed by Luis Enrique Zela-Koort and Pablo Andino at N.A.S.A.L. (Guayaquil, Mexico City), while a series of light boxes by Eva Gold evoke cinematic atmospheres alongside Tasneem Sarkez’s paintings at Rose Easton (London).

MATTA (Milan) challenges the notion of functionality with the luminous sculptures of thebackstudio, presented in an immersive environment created for the occasion. Roland Ross (Margate) investigates the process of image production and reproduction through Edward Kays’ eclectic paintings, while Triangolo (Cremona) fosters a critical dialogue between the sculptures of Federico Cantale, I.W. Payne, and Daniel Graham Loxton’s canvases.

Deconstructing the photographic medium, Olivia Coen and Virginia Ariu from CITY GALERIE WIEN (Vienna) analyze manipulation and the conceptual rethinking of images, while works by Eliška Konečná and Mara Verhoogt, presented by eastcontemporary (Milan), evoke dreamlike atmospheres.

The section also includes projects with shared booths, such as diez (Amsterdam) and Cibrián (San Sebastián), which establish a dialogue between Jochem Mestriner’s paintings and Siyi Li’s works. Nicoletti (London) and TINA (London) reflect on the theme of fluidity with works by Tarek Lakhrissi, Josefa Ntjam, and Karim Boumjimar, while the project by Shahin Zarinbal (Berlin) and Matteo Cantarella (Copenhagen) challenges media specificity with Sanna Helena Berger and Cecilie Norgaard.

Portal, curated by Alessio Antoniolli, brings together artists and projects that transcend disciplinary, temporal, and spatial boundaries to explore hidden narratives. Rejecting categorization, this year Portal is based on the concept of multiplicity, offering an eclectic and sometimes contradictory selection that invites visitors to consider contemporary art as a multifaceted and diverse phenomenon.

References to colonial violence and Amazonian origin stories emerge in the works of Santiago Yahuarcani, a self-taught artist and leader of the Uitoto people in Peru, represented by Crisis (Lima). The rich and complex history of Brazilian identity surfaces in the dialogue between Juliana Matsumura and Flavia Regaldo, presented by Coletivo Amarelo (Lisbon), while P420 (Bologna) explores vernacular cultures and spiritual knowledge through Victor Fotso Nyie, a Cameroonian artist based in Italy who imagines new trajectories between past and future. Past and future, along with rooted identities, multiple geographies, and new alliances, are key principles of blaxTARLINES, an open-source collective of artists, curators, and writers founded in 2015 at Kumasi University (KNUST) in Ghana. Hosted by APALAZZOGALLERY (Brescia) and curated by Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, the collective presents history as a constellation rather than a linear trajectory.

At Galleria Franco Noero (Turin), Lucy Otter challenges perceptions of time, authorship, and categorization, ultimately questioning our understanding of reality. Meanwhile, in contrast to one another, the work of French artist Marilou Poncin, presented by spiaggia libera (Paris), and that of Italian artist Romina Bassu, represented by Studio SALES di Norberto Ruggeri (Rome), reclaim the representation of the female body.

Federica Schiavo (Rome) examines the relationship between lived experiences and artistic production through the works of German artist Michael Bauer, who operates on the border between abstraction and figuration. Richard Saltoun Gallery (London, Rome, New York) explores the relationship between nature and hypermodern aesthetics through the work of Gino Marotta, which bridges the gap between art and design. Finally, at Klemm’s (Berlin), German artist Jonas Roßmeißl offers a sharp critique of contemporary social conditions, questioning concepts such as the public sphere, identity, and intimacy, and analyzing how these can be represented.

The full list of galleries taking part can be found here.