“Open, fluid, polyinstrumental.” With these three keywords, Nicola Ricciardi, director of Miart for the fourth consecutive year, describes the modern and contemporary art fair to Domus. The 28th edition, organized by Fiera Milano, will take place from April 12th to 14th. Just “like water struggles to impose limits and boundaries,“the 2024 edition of Miart is “open to the city, to new audiences, to unprecedented collaborations,” and is accompanied by “numerous initiatives that link art and music, and much more” ­- continues Ricciardi.

As the title of this year’s edition suggests, “No Time No Space,” inspired by a piece by Franco Battiato, the goal is to increasingly extend and permeate the thematic, spatial, and temporal boundaries of Miart by including new curated sections within the fair and spreading unpublished artistic projects throughout the city.

The art week precedes Milan Design Week, and this year, the desired collaboration between the two has materialized. Addressing the relationship between Miart's focus on visual art and the section dedicated to design, Ricciardi explains, “I’ve never found it useful to force myself to define objects as either art or design. So, there are no distinct and distinguishable labels or sections within the fair. I think that both worlds have always had many contact points and have naturally blended, contaminated, and intertwined. The proximity of the Art Week and the Design Week in Milan accentuates this synergy.  In fact, there's content featured in the art fair that crosses over to the Design Week and numerous interdisciplinary collaborations, such as the partnership between Miart and Fuorisalone.it, created with the goal of mutually showcasing both events through guides that talk about Milan’s galleries to design enthusiasts and vice versa.”

Nicola Ricciardi

The presence of some Milanese galleries, especially recent ones, stands out. Ricciardi says: “Milan’s galleries represent the backbone of Miart, it is undeniable that without their support the fair itself would not exist. This applies both to historical entities, those that ten years ago all together decided to believe in and invest in the city's fair - I'm thinking of kaufmann repetto, Giò Marconi, Raffaella Cortese - and to more recent entities, those that have grown with me in the difficult post-Covid years. An example is Martina Simeti, who, after three years within the Emergent category, this year decided to take the leap and participate in the Established category. Or like those other galleries I expect to follow the same upward trajectory in the coming editions, such as ArtNoble, Eastcontemporary, Federico Valvassori.”

The fact remains that the 2024 edition of Miart, sponsored by Intesa Sanpaolo, boasts truly remarkable numbers of participants: 178 galleries from 28 countries, an estimated double-digit increase compared to the 2023 edition. In addition to “Established,” there’s a new “Portal” category, a new section hosting galleries that propose small exhibitions designed to discover or rediscover universes and artistic practices seemingly incredibly distant. Among the names are Anna Boghiguian (Galleria Franco Noero) - whose latest exhibition in Turin was unforgettable - and the Congolese collective Catpc (Kow). Many acquisition opportunities for participating artists and galleries lie ahead thanks to ten awards.

In the city, the art week, a widespread event coordinated by the Municipality of Milan in collaboration with Miart, offers a rich panorama of accessory events. So, Milan, with all its peculiarities, becomes once again a privileged place for exploring and investing in contemporary languages: the eagerly awaited solo exhibition of an artist dear to Domus, Alessandro Mendini - an eclectic and polymorphic figure poised between art and architecture -, the major exhibition of Nari Ward at Hangar Bicocca, and other less conventional and more experimental proposals, both independent and not.

Opening image: Adrian Piper, Das Ding-an-sich bin ich, 2018. Photo Andreas FranzXaver Süß © APRA Foundation Berlin.