Exhibition
The project ICONS A participatory mural for the Museo Diocesano, created with the support of Fondazione di Comunità Milano onlus, was born from the desire to celebrate the museum in the year of its twentieth anniversary. Starting from its Ambrosian roots, the museum dialogues with today and opens up to the city.
Hence the desire to entrust the Orticanoodles collective with the creation of a large mural on the external wall of the museum. ICONS presents itself as a suggestive sequence of images that develops over 300 m2, structured according to the deconstruction and fragmentary recomposition of the individual parts, according to the stylistic signature of Orticanoodles’ latest works. The images – a selection of works reproduced in shades of blue and gray with the use of wall enamel – are sectioned into vertical bands, interspersed, mixed up and placed side by side as if they were metopes of a majestic frieze which is thus recomposed.
The face of Carlo Maria Martini – after whom the museum, founded by him in 2001, was then named – is flanked by the portraits of Saint Ambrose and Saint Charles Borromeo, reference figures for Ambrosian Christianity. These “icons” alternate and integrate with images of works in the museum created by the protagonists of the predominantly Lombard art history, from Simone Peterzano to Giulio Cesare Procaccini, from Morazzone to Gaetano Previati.
The result is a story through images, which places the museum collection and its history in direct relation, allowing the museum to “exit” its walls. The language of street art thus becomes a means to delve even further into the work of art and its meaning.
Orticanoodles
Active on the urban art scene since the early 2000s Orticanoodles was born as a stencil art collective. Orticanoodles carries out “participatory” urban art projects with high-impact results. Thanks to the use of the dusting technique, which allows the preliminary drawing to be traced on large surfaces, even non-experts can participate in the creation of the work with the help of the clear division of the color fields.
The collective has dozens of collaborations with profit and non-profit clients to its credit. Their projects stand out on the Milanese scene as a clear result of the ability of urban art to activate positive synergies between art, social inclusion paths and the valorization of urban areas.
The mural is created in a “participatory” way as part of the Paths for Transversal Skills and Orientation (former school-work alternation).
The students actively participated in the creation of the work and were then involved in the educational activities for children and teenagers dedicated to urban art, organized on this occasion by the museum’s Educational Services.
The exhibition is part of the celebrations for the twentieth anniversary of the Museo Diocesano .
