October 26, 2023–February 26, 2024
Paraventi: Folding Screens from the 17th to 21st Centuries is an extensive exhibition curated by Nicholas Cullinan on view at Fondazione Prada’s Milan venue from October 26, 2023 to February 26, 2024. Two complementary shows, organized by Prada with the support of Fondazione Prada at Prada Rong Zhai in Shanghai and Prada Aoyama Tokyo from November 2, 2023, will further investigate the historical heritage and contemporary interpretations of folding screens in Eastern contexts.
The Milan exhibition explores the histories and semantics of these objects by tracing trajectories of cross-pollination between East and West, processes of hybridization between different art forms and functions, collaborative relationships between designers and artists, and the emergence of newly created works. The folding screens embody liminality and the idea of being on the threshold of two conditions, literally and metaphorically. They cross barriers between different disciplines, cultures, and worlds.
As explained by Nicholas Cullinan, “Painting or sculpture? Art or furniture? Utilitarian or ornamental? Decorative, functional, architectural, or theatrical? This innovative exhibition examines the many questions and paradoxes surrounding the unfolding history of the paravent. This history of the folding screen is one of cultural migration (from East to West), hybridization (between both different art forms and functions) and of what is concealed and revealed. As we shall explore, this history, and especially the way it manifests in the present, is one of liminal objects and of liminality itself; in the process collapsing the rigid distinctions and hierarchies between the different disciplines of art and architecture, decoration, and design.”
The exhibition design created for the Podium building by SANAA, the renowned architectural firm founded by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, will gather more than seventy folding screens, including valuable historical objects and more recent works on loan from international museums and private collections, and a selection of new creations commissioned from more than fifteen international artists specifically for this project. On the Podium’s ground floor, curved transparent Plexiglas partitions alternating with sinuous curtains will simulate the shapes of these objects. They will create a series of spaces with different light atmospheres, in which visitors will be confronted with each thematic group and connected in continuity in a fluid path, throughout the transparency of the partitions. On the upper floor, the single exhibition space represents the overall history of the screens, which are arranged in chronological order on shaped pedestals, that emphasize the typical paravents shape, in a nod to innovative museological displays such as Lina Bo Bardi’s MASP in São Paulo and indeed SANAA’s work for Louvre-Lens.
List of exhibited artists
Alvar Aalto, Carla Accardi, Kai Althoff, Kamrooz Aram, Atelier E.B (Beca Lipscombe & Lucy McKenzie), Francis Bacon, Giacomo Balla, Hernan Bas, Lisa Brice, Elizabeth Burden and William Morris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Tony Cokes, William N. Copley, Pedro de Villegas, Jim Dine, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Charles & Ray Eames, Elmgreen & Dragset, Cao Fei, Isa Genzken, Duncan Grant, Eileen Gray, Wade Guyton, Kenneth Halliwell, Anthea Hamilton, Mona Hatoum, David Hockney, Josef Hoffmann, Pierre Jeanneret, Joan Jonas, William Kentridge, Yves Klein, Le Corbusier, Sol LeWitt, Shuang Li, Goshka Macuga, René Magritte, Kerry James Marshall, Takesada Matsutani, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Chris Ofili, Laura Owens, Lê Phổ, Pablo Picasso, Jean Prouvé, Man Ray, Ed Ruscha, Betye Saar, Watanabe Shikō, Tiffany Sia, Lorna Simpson, John Stezaker, Keiichi Tanaami, Wu Tsang, Luc Tuymans, Cy Twombly, Francesco Vezzoli, Carrie Mae Weems, Franz West, T. J. Wilcox, Chen Zhifo.
