Milano e la Cina: abitare il limite Milan and China: Inhabiting the Boundary

By Beatrice Russo 

Conversing on Milan as a Cultural Hub and A Critical Review of the Exhibition:“Stanza in una Stanza”

Image courtesy of Mu Qing and Sijia Chen – All rights reserved

Always open to the world’s languages and visions, Milan has turned its cosmopolitan nature into a cultural bridge with China as well, where the historic presence of the community rooted in the Paolo Sarpi district — one of the most vibrant Chinatowns in Europe — intertwines with the city’s growing interest in Chinese artistic and cultural expressions, which speak of both tradition and contemporaneity.

Right in this beating heart, the vitality of Chinese culture manifests not only in everyday life but also in events that have become symbols of a true intercultural laboratory: for example, the Chinese New Year transforms the district’s streets into an open-air stage, animated by colors, dances, and performances blending tradition and modernity, while Design Week brings installations and initiatives celebrating Chinese creativity, fusing design, art, and millennia-old culture.

Moreover, as early as the 1970s, some Milanese galleries such as La Galliavola and Renzo Freschi’s gallery introduced Western audiences to the elegance and depth of traditional Chinese art, presenting Buddhist sculptures, lacquered screens, Ming dynasty ceramics, and ritual objects. In recent years, alongside this more classical dimension, a contemporary vision has emerged, portraying a modern, global China often critical of itself: exhibition spaces such as the Mudec – Museum of Cultures, Fabbrica del Vapore, Galleria Numero 51, and MA EC Gallery host works and installations reflecting the contradictions and aspirations of today’s China, offering Milanese audiences a glimpse of a rapidly changing country. Within this lively and ever-evolving framework, the stories of artists, curators, and photographers help redefine the image of China in the eyes of Milan’s public, bringing to the city’s galleries and squares an original, sometimes critical, and always surprising perspective.

Image courtesy of Mu Qing and Sijia Chen – All rights reserved

Stanza in una Stanza: an experiment in intimacy and humanity

Within this subtle dialogue between Milan and China sits Stanza in una Stanza, an exhibition experiment staged in an intimate Milanese gallery, intelligently and delicately exploring the universal concept of home. Conceived both as a psychological refuge and a physical structure, home here becomes a scenic device inviting the visitor into a small yet permeable space, where the most intimate dimension welcomes fragments of the outside world without ever losing its sense of familiarity and safety.

Curated by the young Chinese curators Sijia Chen and Mu Qing — with their refined and considered vision — the exhibition does more than simply present artworks: it constructs a true sensory and perceptual experience, engaging the viewer in a silent dialogue made of small gestures, carefully chosen details, and suggestive atmospheres. Not an artificial immersiveness, but a measured experience, able to convey the authentic feeling of inhabiting a space that resembles us. The works are placed with the care of someone setting a table or preparing a guest room: not as isolated art objects, but as living presences in an inner landscape.

At the center of this scenography are works by Sven Wang, a Chinese artist who operates on the boundary between reality and artifice. The paintings — elegantly placed men’s shoes on the floor, a gaming table with hands poised to move the tiles — at first glance appear flawless, almost hyperrealist, only to reveal upon closer inspection small details out of place, subtle imperfections capable of unsettling perception. In the painting of the shoes, for instance, one notices, on closer look,the label still attached to the sock: an ironic and human touch, reminding us that every home, every story, is also made of scraps and dissonances.

The emotions arise not only from the subjects depicted, but from the path itself: the works are positioned at just the right height, exactly where one would expect to find shoes when entering a home, or to sit down to play mahjong with friends. The exhibition path conveys a sense of everydayness and proximity, immersing the visitor in a recognizable, intimate atmosphere, far from the superfluous layers of artificial intelligence that too often shroud the word “immersive” today. Here, instead, immersiveness is authentic, genuine, profoundly human: born of a subtle gaze and the ability to turn small gestures into poetry.

Lao Xie Xie: what lies beyond the boundary

And then there is Lao Xie Xie, an artist who portrays urban China with a metropolitan and direct gaze, able to capture the visual power of things as they appear. Some of his images arise from a precise idea, studied down to the smallest detail; others spring from a sudden intuition, from a scene that strikes him and he decides to freeze in time.

His work feeds on what can be seen: fragments of reality staged or captured on the fly, compositions that seem like advertising sets and everyday gestures made memorable by the framing. Poses, lights, ordinary objects transformed into symbols: his photographs speak the language of advertising and social media but use it to tell something that escapes the rules of that very communication. The result is a series of scenes where visual perfection coexists with dissonant details, as though each image revealed, beneath its surface, a deeper tension.

Nothing in his photographs is a manifesto or an explicit stance, but each image contains an implicit question — what lies beyond the boundary? — and perhaps the answer is everything or nothing.

The language of social media is decisive: his works live and spread across digital platforms, which are not just a distribution channel but a true space of freedom. In a context where censorship limits what can be said, Lao Xie Xie’s images circulate naturally, slipping into the global flow and opening glimpses of realities that often remain invisible. Through social media, his photography of the taboo becomes both a snapshot and an opening, a way to show what is normally hidden without ever forcing the gaze.

In the end, this seems to unite the visions, experiences, and perspectives that move between Milan and China: a constant tension that translates into a silent, inevitable question, like a red thread. How far can we push ourselves? And the answer, as always, is beyond. Beyond the surface, beyond the scene, beyond the boundary: what matters is learning how to inhabit it.

The original articles is posted on Parmesse in Italian

https://www.parmesse.it/2025/07/07/sijia-chen-mu-qing-stanza-in-una-stanza/