The new Elmgreen & Dragset exhibition at the Fondazione Prada in Milan is an ode to bodily agency in a world where technology, public health and entertainment have rendered our bodies rather useless. Spanning across the entire Fondazione structure, ‘Useless Bodies?’ sets out to reinvent a certain conception of minimalism, from sculpture to interior design and even curation. An open invitation to participate in the abstraction and subversion of bodily politics surrounding exhibitions, ‘Useless Bodies?’ culminates in a bold and playful oeuvre by the Berlin-based duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, on display until August 22, 2022.
Vere van Gool: How did Useless Bodies? at the Fondazione Prada come about?
Elmgreen & Dragset: We received the first emails from Prada in 2017. So we started, of course, coming to the Fondazione and looking at the spaces to think about what would be interesting to do here. Typically we go through a number of ideas before we land on something that’s taboo, or something that hits home. The wonderful thing with the Fondazione is that each space looks so different. As opposed to homogeneous white cubes, here you have all these different atmospheres, allowing us to create various universes within our work.
VVG: Useless Bodies? reads as a very architectural show, spread across the Fondazione Prada. Can you elaborate on how your work responds to the architectural surroundings?
E&D: It’s in the DNA of our process that we actively work with the spaces in which we exhibit. When we did the Venice Biennial in 2009, we turned two pavilions into private homes. We realised the pavilions actually existed in the scale of a private home, and the Giardini looked like a posh neighbourhood where everyone competes to have the most beautiful garden. Our starting point is always the spatial conditions, the architecture. This autumn, we will have a show at a new museum in China which we hope to turn into a giant nightclub. We plan to throw a big party with music and lights, if possible, where the kids will come and have fun. The leftovers of the party will become the sculptural objects.
The Fondazione Prada isn’t this big museum construction that impresses people. It holds a lot of different spaces, and in a way it’s like a village with an architectural interest in diversity. Every aspect of the Fondazione looks different, from the Golden Tower to the North Gallery to the Podium, the Cinema and the Cistern. Most importantly, there are these public alleys and walkways throughout the Fondazione, allowing one to enter without paying and just chill out outside. Hence our work Cooling Box, which gives off the illusion of someone having a picnic in the courtyard.
We observed the spaces as offering four different environments — first there is this arena-like public space, which is the Podium with its glass walls. The transparency and openness allowed us to address issues of display, relevant today within our own sculptural practice. Upstairs, the Garden of Eden (2022), is a room lacking windows that feels like a laboratory, where workstations are almost like jail cells. Then there’s the Cistern that houses our Piscina di Largo Isarco (2021), which felt a natural fit. At the North Gallery, we blurred the borders between interior design, design objects and artworks. Not all work on display is made by us, blurring the boundaries of what is considered art, design and architecture.