Monsters

Giving form, substance and language to the fears of our time—both the personal ones that lie hidden in the unconscious, and the collective ones that move through public life with their unsettling force.

With this aim, the Istituto Europeo di Design challenged students from a range of disciplines through Monsters—Mostri in mostra, a creative call that led to an exhibition open to the public on Thursday and Friday May 21–22, 2026 at Teatro IED Milano. The goal of the project was to engage with the figure of the monster, one of the deepest and most recurring archetypes in human imagination.

This act of symbolic construction, developed by young designers either individually or in pairs under the curatorship of Loredana Parmesani (art critic, art historian and IED lecturer), produced a wide range of outcomes: from garments to editorial projects (fanzines) and illustration, from sculpture to audiovisual installations. The eleven works on display all represent, in different ways, forms of the inner monster—created not to surrender to it, but to confront it, transform it and ultimately exorcise it. Because shaping the monster means taking ownership of what frightens us, bringing it back into the realm of the visible and the knowable.

“The very word monstrum,” explains Loredana Parmesani, “in classical Latin refers to a prodigy, an omen—something that appears outside the usual order of nature and therefore arouses both fear and wonder, repulsion and attraction. Etymologically, the monstrous is that which is shown—and this paradoxical urge to be seen is an essential part of its nature. The monster does not hide: it reveals itself. It is within this dialectical tension between the visible and the unspeakable, between form and excess, that the work proposed to the students takes shape. Creativity here becomes both a therapeutic and a critical practice—in line with a tradition of thought that, from Freud to Jung, from Georges Bataille to Julia Kristeva, has recognised in the abject, the uncanny and the monstrous double a privileged mirror of identity.”

The two-day programme concludes with The Beauty of the Unexpected, a unique conversation where cinema and fashion intersect in an original dialogue. Antonio Marras and Paolo Sorrentino will appear together for the first time for a special lecture curated by OffiCine and IED Cinema.

The common thread is a theme that runs deeply through both of their poetics, albeit expressed through different languages. In Paolo Sorrentino’s cinema, the unexpected emerges first and foremost through his characters: figures that defy expectations and exist in a constant dissonance with reality. To this is added the unexpected in imagery—visual elements that may seem “out of place”, yet contribute to building a layered and surprising imaginary.

For Antonio Marras—artist as well as designer—the beauty of the unexpected instead arises from contamination: a continuous journey across eras, geographies and forms of expression. Poetry, cinema, visual arts, theatre, folklore and costume all coexist in his creative practice, generating aesthetic and cultural short circuits. Nothing is accidental: the unexpected is the result of a cross-disciplinary vision, a constant dialogue between distant worlds that meet and transform one another.

Monsters—Mostri in mostra / IED Milano—Via Pompeo Leoni 3. Free admission. / Thursday May 21, 10am–6pm; Friday May 22, 10am–3:30pm. / Talk at 7pm, subject to availability. Free admission.