Fair Tales Today

The exhibition Fairy Tales Today is a re-telling of the classic fairy tale in a collective key, through the works of prominent modern and contemporary artists. From Osvaldo Licini, Fausto Melotti, Lucio Fontana, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Piero Gilardi, through to Yves Klein, Carol Rama, Aldo Mondino, Emilio Isgrò, Luigi Mainolfi, Emanuele Luzzati, Joseph Kosuth, Kiki Smith, Grazia Toderi, Pinot Gallizio, Luigi Veronesi, Joseph Beuys, Sofia Cacherano di Bricherasio, and Giuseppe Pietro Bagetti, the exhibition weaves together different languages, eras, and sensibilities to show how fairy tales are not just a literary or illustrative genre but the essence of visual thinking.

Featuring works kindly on loan from world-class local institutions and major private collections, foundations, international art galleries, and antiquarian booksellers, the aim is not to illustrate stories but to delve into their deeper symbolism and devices—mirrors, woods, magical objects, glass slippers, metamorphoses, happy endings—transforming Miradolo Castle into a fairy-tale space itself, both intimate and collective at the same time.

Curated by Roberto Galimberti, under the general coordination of Paola Eynard and with content advisory provided by Enrica Melossi, Fairy Tales Today explores images in relation to the imaginary dimension of the tales. So not just a sequence of art works, but rooms that unfold like chapters, objects that give clues, pictures that act like thresholds. Eighteen years on from the Cosso Foundation’s establishment, this new exhibition at Miradolo Castle looks at fairy tales to reflect on the contemporary role of the castle, their feminine soul—fairies are mostly female and many of the earliest European fairy tales were written by women—and on their potential today to still be a space of vision and growth.

The origin of folk tales runs back deep in time, in an oral dimension. Before the written word there was the voice, gesture, transmission.

The exhibition weaves together that primary dimension with the European literary tradition, thanks to a series of rare books and historic first editions—including Straparola, Basile, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Perrault, and Alice in Wonderful—pop-up books, storytelling theaters and dioramas, and little masterpieces of paper art. Alongside the classics there are unexpected rewritings, translation errors, and variants that tell of how the same tale can take different forms—there are over seven hundred for Cinderella—just like every book is budding with different meanings.

The story continues through the rooms of the castle, unfolding in thematic chapters that translate the structure of fairy tales into images and matter. The woods and the castle become an inner landscape, places to journey through in company with nineteenth century paintings and environmental sculptures. Characters take shape in the mirror, which visitors step through to enter the tale and become a character themselves. Villains peep through the shadows, between chessboards and informal presences that conjure up conflict and disorder. Mere and symbolic objects—shoes, apples, roses, and carpets—trace out a constellation of clues, while transformations, magical helpers, and happy endings unfold in installations, light sculptures, and pierced skies that suggest possibilities more than resolutions. 

An original sound installation curated by Avant-dernière pensée provides a compelling backdrop to the exhibition, taking inspiration from Ma mère l’oye (Mother Goose) composed by Ravel.