Fondazione Deloitte and Casa degli Artisti announce the inauguration of the exhibition “A sculpture for Margherita Hack” 19 January – 13 February 2022

Fondazione Deloitte, in collaboration with #casadegliartisti and with the support of the Milan Municipality - Office for Art in Public Spaces, announces the opening of the exhibition “A sculpture for Margherita Hack”, which will last from 19 January to 13 February 2022 in the studios of the #casadegliartisti. 

The objective of the initiative is to give the city of Milan the first statute on public ground dedicated to a female figure, a prime exponent of the world of STEM, Margherita Hack - astrophysicist, academic and a brilliant twentieth-century populariser of science. The project for its realisation has already begun and the sculpture will be inaugurated next June on the hundredth anniversary of her birth. 

Casa degli Artisti has invited a selected group of Italian and international artists to take part in the competition for ideas on the realisation of the work. The artists who accepted the invitation are #chiaracamoni, #giuliacenci, #zhannakadyrova, #paolamargherita, #marziamigliora, #lilianamoro, #sissi and #silviavendramel. 

The press conference in which the special mention, the winning project and the public space chosen for the installation of the work, including the jury’s motivations, is scheduled for 9 February 2022 at 11:00, at the #casadegliartisti. 

It will be attended by: Guido Borsani - President of Fondazione Deloitte, Valentina Kastlunger - President of #casadegliartisti, Fabio Pompei - CEO of Deloitte Italia, Tommaso Sacchi - Head of Culture for the Milan Municipality, Vincenzo Trione – academic, art critic and President of the Jury and Anna Wolter – astrophysicist and researcher at the Brera INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico and member of the jury. The winning artist will also be present. It will be possible to follow the press conference at a distance on the social media of Deloitte Italia and #casadegliartisti. 

The exhibition presents the public with texts, drawings, renderings and maquettes illustrating the 8 projects proposed. The artists have all met the challenge of the project using their own particular languages, to produce a work dedicated to the woman Margherita Hack and to her work, clearly 

recognisable as such, and at the same time proposing a reflection on the concept itself of the monument and its traditional form. 

The attention to Hack’s scientific research but also to her personal life, the coherence of her professional, civil and political choices, her evident commitment to the popularisation of science, her relationship with the public realm and re-thinking of the act of remembering are key elements that link - though in different ways and through widely varying choices - the works presented. #chiaracamoni, fascinated by binary stars, one of Hack’s areas of research, has imagined a monument that separates into two distinct but symbiotic elements: a physical and material presence in the city, in which iron, aluminium, brass, silver, gold, copper and silicon are assembled through the fusion of everyday objects, as well as a film that interprets her life, person and approach to astrophysics. 

We are Made of Stars, the title of the work, reminds us of the origin of matter and what Hack was always telling us. All the elements on Earth, from hydrogen to helium, from silicon to iron, right up to silver and gold, come from nuclear fusion and the explosions of supernovas. The stars thus create the elements of the periodic table, including those that constitute the human body. 

Giulia Cenci suggests an anti-monumental work. A sculpture that does not depict a body, but a mind capable of understanding the world that surrounds it in a humble and passionate manner. In this sculpture the body loses its classical appearances and is reduced to just a few elements. 

Parts of moulds of human and animal bones are melted and combined as hybrids to build guidelines in tension, suspended along the perimeter of a simple bed. On this axis a sleeping face is caught and suspended. The origin of this form comes from the cast of a model used for reanimation, on whose anonymous physiognomy Hack’s own features have been superimposed manually. The body is formed of the encounter of remains (or internal structures) of various animal and human species. 

Zhanna Kadrikova proposes the profile of a figure depicting Hack with a torch in her hand illuminating a fragment of star-studded sky on a large blue sheet of glass. The fragment represents the sky on the date and at the hour of Hack’s birth, which may be visible or not according to the position of the stars. A homage that concentrates on the origin of the life of a scientist and astrophysicist with a strong sense of civil and political commitment. 

During the day the sun’s light illuminates the figures on the glass and the circle projects a fine shadow of the night sky onto the ground. At nightfall, the torch the scientist is holding in her hand with an LED strip incorporated in the outline of the ellipsis will illuminate the constellations and stars engraved on the glass. 

Paola Margherita depicts Margherita Hack in two separate elements. One shows Hack as a young woman, a full-length figure, engaged in an athletic movement upside down, climbing a trellis. The trellis alludes to the stand of a radio telescope. The second element is a model of the trail left by a meteor in the air, as it is about to brush against the earth The two separate elements are at a distance from one another but are both present in the spectators’ line of vision. 

Marzia Migliora takes up the definition of Hack as a woman with her eyes on the sky and feet firmly planted on the earth, imagining a work where the stars can touch the earth and become a 

pavement to walk along, linger, play and learn. A social space where human and celestial bodies are close together. 

The pavement reproduces a portion of the sky’s vault: the constellation of Cepheus, which comprises 168 stars and 1 nebula. The coordinates and placing of the stars are a faithful reproduction of the parts visible in the night sky. The installation is made of concrete slabs with the insertion of coloured marble and steel, enriched with textual and multi-functional elements with which #people can interact. The 8 stars composing the constellation will be surfaces to sit on and the public will be able to interact with the installation by placing the torch of their smartphone on the surface of some of the marble seats, so as to “light up the stars” positioned on the ground, by means of optic fibre cables. 

Liliana Moro concentrates not on Hack’s scientific studies, but mainly on her personal life: a great sportswoman, an animal lover, a vegetarian and a scientific populariser, engaged in social and political life. A woman who stands as an example of coherence and passion. 

The sculpture, made of bronze, is a head-and-shoulders bust of Margherita Hack resting on an irregular, circular base suggesting a vortex, or spiral, but also an unusual architectural shape recalling the circular movement of a bicycle wheel. The upwards movement is heightened by the position of the forward-leaning bust with raised arms forming a telescope with her hands. As though fused in a single body, on the base are a dog and a cat, the dog looking at us whilst the cat’s gaze is directed towards Margherita and the sky. 

Sissi depicts Hack as a metamorphosis: a person born of the elements of a galaxy and engaged in studying the stars that formed her. An uninterrupted flow of life starting from the stars and returning there. Margherita Hack teaches us that human beings are no different to the universe but an integral part of it: she does not look at the cosmos from outside but from within it. 

The monument to Margherita Hack is a bronze sculpture that depicts her as she emerges from a galaxy, observing the stars. Raising her arms upwards, she mimes a telescope. The statue invites us to recognise ourselves as similar beings as it shows us a common gesture - that of looking at the stars without any technical support: an invitation to dream and use our imagination. 

Entitled Sguardo fisico / Physical/Physicist’s gaze, it reveals her identity as an astrophysicist, playing with the two words that characterise her. The Gaze is the sense capable of perceiving light stimuluses, whilst Physical/Physicist not only recalls the roots of her profession but also her robust and practical intellectual and philosophical attitude. 

Silvia Vendramel proposes a sculpture that is sensitive to the incidence of light, which can offer those living in a public space a bodily, physical and visual experience at the same time. A sculpture that re-creates conditions similar to those of scientific research in which nothing is taken for granted and only through a lens of constant, visionary observation, is it possible to attain knowledge. 

The juxtaposition of materials and shapes is realised in bronze and aluminium, on which the light plays differently and according to the time of day, engravings and holes on the bronze surface form a free interpretation of ancestral symbols relating to the constellations. 

The winning artist will be in residency at the #casadegliartisti, which will provide her with the support necessary for carrying out the work. The sculpture will be donated to the Milan Municipality and Fondazione Deloitte will take over the cost of maintaining the work in future years. 

The jury, consisting of the President Vincenzo Trione (academic and art critic) and the members of the jury Guido Borsani (President of Fondazione Deloitte), Fabio Pompei (CEO Deloitte Italia), Alessandro Oldani (Conserver of Public Property at the Office of Art in Public Spaces for the Milan Municipality), Benedetta Tobagi (journalist and writer), Diletta Huyskes (researcher in gender studies & technology ethics), Sara Sesti (teacher of Mathematics and member of the Association “Donne e Scienza”), Anna Wolter (astrophysicist and researcher at the Breara NAF-Osservatorio Astronomico), Simona Cerrato (physicist and scientific populariser, a co-worker of Margherita Hack’s), Alberto Salvadori (Director of the Fondazione ICA Milano, member of the Comitato scientifico for Casa degli Artisti), Giovanna Amadasi (Head of Public and Educational Programs Pirelli HangarBicocca), Chiara Costa (head of programming for the Fondazione Prada), Milovan Farronato (critic and independent curator), Alessandro Danovi (Academic and financial director of the Casa degli Artisti) met on 29 November 2021 and after thorough and profound discussion, chose the winning project and decided to confer special mention to a second project.