Nan Goldin’s Experiential Storytelling in Milan
“This Will Not End Well,” housed in the vast industrial Pirelli HangarBicocca space, evokes human emotions and introspective moments within colorful fabric structures
When art travels around the world, it often finds new life and meaning according to the spaces where it lands, presenting itself to new audiences. Take an artist like Nan Goldin, for example. Her deeply personal approach to storytelling through photography explores human feelings and life in a unique and touching way, but depending on where you see her art, you might have an even more intense experience.
In Milan, Goldin’s microcosm of introspection is currently displayed in “This Will Not End Well,” a new exhibition that perfectly juxtaposes the breathtaking macro spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca, the archeo-industrial, internationally acclaimed cathedral of contemporary art that is a work of art in itself. This encounter happens through a series of unique buildings that host eight different installations inside the hangar, like cocoons that lead into the world of Goldin. They make the visitor feel both welcomed and protected, setting the mood for total intimacy.
This atmosphere is made possible by the collaboration between Hala Wardé, Goldin’s close collaborator and architect, and Danish textile producer Kvadrat, which supplied 2,600 square meters of fabric designed by Finn Sködt and Sahco. The material was used for the whole interior, exterior and light-lock layers of each building, individually designed in response to the specific art pieces they host. Together, they constitute a village inside the hangar.
Nan Goldin grew up in the suburbs of Boston and started taking photographs when she was a teenager. Her first solo exhibition, at the age of twenty, centered on her drag queen friends. The unavailability of a darkroom made her shift from prints to slides as a way to present her art. She moved to New York, became part of the radical underground art movement and soon mastered a way to make still presentations in a very cinematic way. Over the years she became internationally acclaimed. Her collaboration with director Laura Poitras on 2022’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and nominated for an Academy Award.
“This Will Not End Well” presents some of Goldin’s finest and most popular slideshows, but it also offers something new: it is the first exhibition dedicated to her work as a filmmaker. Starting with her magnum opus, “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency,” Goldin brings the visitor into her inner circle of friends and lovers, mourning the loss of a whole generation decimated by the AIDS epidemic. The installation still works in its original format, and the noise of an operating slide machine makes you imagine the artist is actually present, operating it herself at the back of the room.
Other installations mix photography with movie samples, videos, music soundtracks, props and spoken word. A variety of subjects are touched on through these various forms of narration: drug addiction, ecstasy, the trans community and the innocence of childhood.
Two very recent works by Goldin are presented here at their European debut. “You Never Did Anything Wrong” reflects on humans’ emotional ties to their dead pet animals, documented through a series of images of pet graves and epitaphs. “Stendhal Syndrome” is a re-elaboration of a series of photos of Louvre masterpieces: a narration about the perils of fascination with art, presented as a journey through six stories of ancient Greek mythological figures.
The most spectacular artwork of this exhibit is “Sisters, Saints, Sibyls,” dedicated to Goldin’s sister Barbara, who was institutionalized and died by suicide at the age of 18, after years of struggle with her family and society for not conforming to the 1960s-era social norms on female identity and sexuality. Her traumatic life and defiant spirit worked as powerful inspiration for Goldin. In this work, restaged here for the first time in its original presentation in Paris in 2004, she mixes spoken word with three parallel video installations, props and wax figures. HangarBicocca’s 20-meter-high Cubo space hosts this installation, evoking a prison tower like that of Saint Barbara, whose story of martyrdom and rebellion against her father is narrated in stark parallel to Barbara Goldin’s life story. The audience is captivated and easily stands throughout the whole 35 minutes of the installation, watching from a top-gallery perspective. Breathtaking and very engaging, this final installation lingers in visitors’ minds as they walk back through the little village, into the darkness and silence of the museum’s suspended atmosphere.
Nan Goldin’s “This Will Not End Well” is at Milan’s Pirelli HangarBicocca until mid-February 2026.
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