A statue for Margherita Hack in Milan: here are the eight projects, all by women

Held from Jan. 19 to Feb. 13, 2022, the exhibition Una scultura per Margherita Hack (A Sculpture for Margherita Hack), the show organized by Fondazione Deloitte, in collaboration with Casa degli Artisti and with the support of the City of Milan- Ufficio Arte negli Spazi Pubblici ( Art in Public Spaces Office). The goal of theinitiative is to donate to the city of Milan the first sculpture on public land dedicated to a historical female figure as well as the highest expression of the STEM world, Margherita Hack (Florence, 1922 - Trieste, 2013), astrophysicist, academic and brilliant popularizer of science of the 20th century. The realization project has already started and the sculpture will be unveiled in June next year on the occasion of the centenary of her birth.

Casa degli Artisti invited a select group of Italian and international women artists to participate in the competition of ideas for the realization of the work. The artists who accepted the invitation are Chiara Camoni, Giulia Cenci, Zhanna Kadyrova, Paola Margaret, Marzia Migliora, Liliana Moro, Sissi and Silvia Vendramel. The press conference at which the special mention, the winning project, the public space chosen for the installation of the work, and the jury’s motivations will be announced is scheduled for Feb. 9, 2022 at 11 a.m., also at Casa degli Artisti (it was originally scheduled for Jan. 19, but was postponed). It will feature the participation of: Guido Borsani (President of Fondazione Deloitte), Valentina Kastlunger (President of Casa degli Artisti), Fabio Pompei (CEO of Deloitte) Italy, Tommaso Sacchi (Councillor for Culture of the Municipality of Milan), Vincenzo Trione (academic, art critic and President of the Jury) and Anna Wolter (astrophysicist researcher at INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera and member of the jury). Finally, the winning artist will be present. It will also be possible to follow the conference remotely on the social channels of Deloitte Italia and Casa degli Artisti.

The exhibition will present to the public the texts, drawings, renderings and maquettes illustrating the eight proposed projects. The artists responded to the challenge of designing, through their own peculiar language, a work dedicated to the woman Margherita Hack and her work, which is clearly identifiable as such, and to propose, at the same time, a reflection on the very concept of monument and its traditional form. Attention to Hack’s scientific research but also to her personal life, the coherence of her professional, civic and political choices, her demonstrated commitment to the popularization of science, her relationship with public space and a rethinking of the act of remembering are key elements that bind, albeit in different ways and with even distant choices, the works presented.

The winning artist will be in residence at Casa degli Artisti, which will provide her with the necessary support for the creation of the work. The sculpture will be donated to the City of Milan, and Fondazione Deloitte will be responsible for its maintenance for years to come. The selection jury, composed of Jury President Vincenzo Trione (academic and art critic) and jurors Guido Borsani (President Fondazione Deloitte), Fabio Pompei (CEO Deloitte Italia), Alessandro Oldani (Conservator of Cultural Heritage at the Office of Art in Public Spaces of the City of Milan), Benedetta Tobagi (journalist and writer), Diletta Huyskes (researcher in gender & technology ethics), Sara Sesti (lecturer in Mathematics and member of the Association “Women and Science”), Anna Wolter (astrophysicist researcher at INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera), Simona Cerrato (physicist and popularizer of science, collaborator of Margherita Hack), Alberto Salvadori (director of Fondazione ICA Milano, member of the Scientific Committee of Casa degli Artisti), Giovanna Amadasi (Head of Public and Educational Programs Pirelli HangarBicocca), Chiara Costa (Head of Programming Fondazione Prada), Milovan Farronato (critic and independent curator), Alessandro Danovi (Academician and financial director of Casa degli Artisti) met met on November 29 and, after an intense and thorough discussion, chose the winning project and decided to give a special mention to a second project. Here are the submitted projects below.

Chiara Camoni

Fascinated by binary stars, one of Hack’s areas of research, Chiara Camoni imagined a monument that doubles as two separate but symbiotic elements: a physical and material presence in the city, in which iron, aluminum, brass, silver, gold, copper, and silicon will be assembled through the fusion of everyday objects, and a film that can interpret her life, her person, and her approach to astrophysics. We are made of stars, the title of the work, brings matter back to its origin and to what Hack repeated. All the elements on Earth come from nuclear fusion and supernova explosions. Stars then create the elements of the periodic table, including those that make up the human body.

Giulia Cenci

It is an anti-monumental work that is suggested by Giulia Cenci. A sculpture that is not a depiction of a body, but of a mind capable of understanding the world around it in a humble and passionate way. In this sculpture, the body loses its classical appearance and is reduced to very few elements. Parts of casts of human and animal bones are cast and hybridized to construct tensioned guide lines, suspended on the perimeter of a simple bed. On this axis a sleeping face is held and suspended. The origin of this form comes from the cast of a resuscitation dummy, to whose anonymous physiognomy Hack’s physiognomic features were manually superimposed. The body consists of the meeting of the legacies (or internal structures) of various animal or human species.

Zhanna Kadirova

Zhanna Kadirova ’s proposal is a silhouetted figure depicting Hack with a flashlight in her hand illuminating a fragment of starry sky on a large blue glass. That fragment is the sky of Hack’s date and time of birth, which may or may not be visible depending on the position of the stars. A tribute that focuses on the beginning of the life of a scientist, astrophysicist with strong civic and political commitment. During the day, sunlight illuminates the figures on the glass, and the circle casts a beautiful shadow of the night sky on the ground. As night falls, the flashlight held by the scientist and an LED strip embedded in the outline of the ellipse will illuminate the constellations and stars etched on the glass.

Paola Daisy

Paola Margherita represents Margherita Hack with two separate elements. A full-length depiction of Hack at a still youthful age, engaging in an athletic-playful gesture with her head down as she climbs a trellis. Said pylon alludes to the foot of a radio telescope. The second element is the modeling of the wake that a meteoroid leaves in the air as it is about to skim the ground. The two distinct sculptural elements are distant from each other, but always simultaneously present in the observers’ field of view.

Marzia Migliora

Marzia Migliora takes Hack’s definition of a woman with her eyes to the sky and her feet planted on the ground, to imagine a work where the stars can touch the ground to become a pavement to walk on, in which to stand, play and learn. A social space and proximity between human and celestial bodies. The pavement reproduces a portion of the celestial canopy: the constellation Cepheus, which includes 168 stars and 1 nebula. The coordinates and placement of the stars are a faithful reproduction of their visible positions in the night sky. The installation is made of concrete slabs, with polychrome marble and steel inserts, enriched by textual and multifunctional elements, with which people will have the opportunity to interact. The 8 stars that make up the constellation will be surfaces for people to sit on, and the public will be able to interact with the installation by placing their smartphone flashlight on the surface of some of the marble seats and thus “turn on the stars” placed on the floor, through fiber optic cables.

Liliana Moro

Liliana Moro dwells not only on the scientific studies, but above all on Hack’s personal life: great sportswoman, animal lover, vegetarian, popularizer, engaged in political and social life. A woman who represents an example of consistency and passion. The sculpture, made of bronze, depicts Margherita Hack half-length and rests on a non-regular circular base that resembles a vortex, a spiral, but also an atypical architecture, reminiscent of the circular movement of a bicycle wheel. The upward movement is amplified by the tilted position of the torso and the arms raised to form a telescope with the hands. On the circular base as if they were one body, a dog and a cat, the dog looks at us while the cat turns its gaze toward Margaret and the sky.

Sissi

Sissi represents Hack as a metamorphosis: a person born from the elements of a galaxy and engaged in studying the stars that formed it. An interrupted flow of life that starts from the stars and returns to them. Margherita Hack teaches us that the human being is not something other than the universe but an integral part of it: he does not look at the cosmos from the outside but from the inside. Margherita Hack’s monument is a bronze sculpture of her as she emerges from a galaxy to gaze at the stars. Raising her arms upward, she simulates a telescope. The statue invites us to recognize ourselves as similar because it depicts a common gesture, which is to look at the stars without any technical means: an invitation to dream and imagination. With the title Physical Gaze, she reveals her identity as an astro-physicist by playing with two words that are characteristic for her. Looking is the sense capable of perceiving luminous stimuli while Physical not only recalls the root of her profession but also the concreteness and solidity of her intellectual and philosophical attitude.

Silvia Vendramel

A sculpture sensitive to the incidence of light, which can offer those who experience it in public space a bodily, physical and visual experience at the same time, is Silvia Vendramel’s proposal. A sculpture that recreates conditions similar to those of scientific research in which nothing is taken for granted and only through slow, constant and visionary observation is it possible to tap into knowledge. The juxtaposition of materials and forms made of glass, bronze, aluminum on which light has different incidence depending on the passage of the day. Engravings and holes present on the bronze surface constitute a free interpretation of ancestral symbols related to the constellations.

A statue for Margherita Hack in Milan: here are the eight projects, all by women

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