Three hundred thousand people pass through Milan Central Station every day. Starting next week, Moncler is transforming their commuter experience.
On the occasion of this year’s Salone del Mobile, the brand is taking over the historic landmark and filling it with the faces and quotes of some of our boldest contemporary minds. The large-scale exhibition, entitled “An Invitation to Dream,” will rewire all of the station’s billboards—typically plastered with the anodyne—to present, in slow-motion collage, the likes of artist Daniel Arsham, writers Deepak Chopra and Jeremy O. Harris, and musician Rina Sawayama, each of whom embody the vigor of the intrepid explorer, a Moncler signature.
The showcase, running from April 15 through April 21, will also feature food artist Laila Gohar, poet and artist JulianKnxx, architect Sumayya Vally, and chef Ruth Rogers, as well as Zaya Ribeiro, the first indigenous Ford model from Brazil; ballet dancer and actress Francesca Hayward; and heralded makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench. The output of these creatives “carries with it new hopes and possibilities. It’s the deeply transformative aspects in their work and practice that makes them essential artists of our time,” says exhibition curator and Dazed Media founder Jefferson Hack.
Their portraiture comes courtesy of artist Jack Davison, renowned in his own right for his brilliant, bizarre captures of big-time cultural players. His method of hand-printed black-and-white lithography finds his subjects briefly outside of time, where their humanity is better accessed. Through his work, we not only come to understand them but also feel emboldened to think as they do. These images, coupled with textual invocations from each chosen creative, will float across Milan Central’s walls, fashioning it as a meditative space, rather than a bustling thoroughfare.
Moncler’s chairman and CEO, Remo Ruffini, will be on hand to commemorate the brand’s grand “hack” of such an iconic—and public—space. The house is “always aiming to not only do new, but to do better,” he says. For others, perhaps the exhibition is an invitation to do the same.
