“Rebecca” by Benni Bosetto: When Pirelli HangarBicocca Becomes Body and Home
The curtain rose the other night at Pirelli HangarBicocca on Rebecca, and it felt less like an opening and more like stepping into a lived-in house. Not metaphorically, but physically, emotionally—almost bodily. Benni Bosetto’s first institutional solo show transformed the vast industrial space into a mental interior where time slows down, bodies recline, and the gaze stops producing and begins to linger. An opening that didn’t demand attention, but presence.
Conceived as an environment to move through rather than a sequence to consume, the works created a domestic, imaginative landscape where lightness, rest, and pleasure become political gestures. During the evening, the performance Tango (II version) completed the atmosphere: pairs of dancers crossed the space to the sound of a milonga, introducing an intimate, sideways choreography built on proximity, listening, and shared micro-decisions. For one night, the museum stopped being a container and became a moving body. Among the guests at the Milan rendezvous were many familiar faces from the art and cultural world, including artistic director Vicente Todolí, artists Maurizio Cattelan, Vedova Mazzei, Andrea Sala, Ruth Beraha, Patrick Tuttofuoco, and figures such as Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Lorenzo Balbi, Nicola Ricciardi, Luigi Fassi, Luca Cerizza, Marta Papini, Milovan Farronato, and Lucrezia Barnabò Visconti.
Because Rebecca, curated by Fiammetta Griccioli, works as a sensitive manifesto—without proclamations. It speaks of freedom and control, desire and productivity, self-determination and constraint, choosing a soft, oblique path. Here, daydreaming is not escapism but everyday resistance. Through drawing, sculpture, installation, and performance, Bosetto centers the physicality of bodies—their vulnerability, their capacity to elude dominant models. The body not as a machine, but as a site of experience, contact, possibility.
The title references Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca, where the house preserves the memory of those who inhabited it. Here too architecture becomes organism, feminine body, space that both shelters and holds. “Rebecca” means bond, union, and during the opening—whose cocktail was conceived by Forniture Pallotta—this etymology turned into gesture: in the steps of the tango, in the inhabitable works, in a museum that for one evening chose not to impose a rhythm, but to listen to it.
Text: Germano D’Acquisto
Photos: Ludovica Arcero
Image credits in order of appearance:
1. Benni Bosetto “Rebecca” Veduta della mostra, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano, 2026 Courtesy l’artista e Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano
2. Bistrot di Pirelli HangarBicocca
3. Benni Bosetto Tango (II version), 2026 Performance e veduta dell’installazione, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano, 2026 Prodotto da Pirelli HangarBicocca Courtesy l’artista e Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano
3. Benni Bosetto Tango (II version), 2026 Performance e veduta dell’installazione, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano, 2026 Prodotto da Pirelli HangarBicocca Courtesy l’artista e Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano
4. Benni Bosetto “Rebecca” Veduta della mostra, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano, 2026 Courtesy l’artista e Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano
5. Atrio di ingresso di Pirelli HangarBicocca
6. Benni Bosetto La bocca (particolare), 2022 Veduta dell’installazione, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano, 2026 Courtesy l’artista e Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano
7. Benni Bosetto Le cellule (particolare), 2026 Veduta dell’installazione, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano, 2026 Prodotto da Pirelli HangarBicocca Courtesy l’artista e Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano
8. Benni Bosetto “Rebecca” Veduta della mostra, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano, 2026 Courtesy l’artista e Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano
