Benni Bosetto
Rebecca
12.02 – 19.07.2026
Current Exhibition – shed
Admission to the exhibition is free and online reservation guarantees priority access in the selected time slot. Members have priority access even without reservation.
“Rebecca”: the exhibition by Benni Bosetto at Pirelli HangarBicocca
Curated by Fiammetta Griccioli, “Rebecca” is the Italian artist’s first major institutional exhibition. The title is inspired by the 1938 novel of the same name by English writer and playwright Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989). In the novel, the real protagonist is a house that preserves the memory of a deceased woman named Rebecca, who lived there.
The house in the novel, just like the display at Pirelli HangarBicocca, becomes a true architectural female body, a living organism. The name Rebecca, whose etymology refers to “bond” or “union”, alludes to welcoming, gathering, and retaining – acts that are central to Bosetto’s poetics of merging the body and environment in an intimate, continuous relationship.
The exhibition project transforms the Shed space by evoking a domestic and welcoming environment, where rooms, walls, and surfaces seem to come alive, giving the space a private and inhabited dimension. It is both a place and a statement: at an historical moment when everything is dominated by production speed, Bosetto invites us to reclaim our subjective time, a time for dreaming, resting, and regaining our imagination.
The space conceived by Bosetto becomes at once an intimate place and a political act. Visitors are welcomed into a dreamlike landscape where every element evokes the desire to imagine, and where erotic and pleasure-related signs form the backdrop to a refuge in which everyone can rediscover themselves, free from social conditioning.
Another key element of Bosetto’s artistic practice is the physical creation of his work through long hours of manual labor. Each drawing is created by hand by the artist over the course of several months. Every ornament, every decoration devoid of functional purpose within the domestic space, takes on symbolic value. Ultimately, her entire artistic practice aims to achieve one outcome: providing shelter from the urgency and pressure of linear time. Here, visitors can daydream and have the freedom to imagine and affirm their present and future.
Performance Tango (II version), 2026
Inside the exhibition “Rebecca” by Benni Bosetto, in the space that represents “il cuore” (the heart), the beating nucleus of the exhibition dedicated to emotional impulses such as love, and infatuation, visitors experience the performance and installation Tango (II version), 2026.
Tango (II version) reflects on the process of falling in love as a kind of intoxication and the physicality of feelings, while playing with clichés and archetypes associated with love. Inspired by tango and the traditional milonga setting, the performance is repeated regularly throughout the exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca. Sessions feature amateur dancers wearing headdresses that resemble animals and plants, creating an interspecies choreography.
Throughout the duration of the exhibition, the performance takes place once a week.
Schedule of the performances:
- Thursday 16 April 11.00 AM -12.30 PM
- Sunday 26 April 11.00 AM -12.30 PM
- Sunday 10 May 5.30 PM – 7.00 PM
- Thursday 14 May 11.00 AM -12.30 PM
- Sunday 17 May 5.30 PM – 7.00 PM
- Saturday 23 May 3.30 PM – 5.00 PM
- Thursday 28 May 11.00 AM -12.30 PM
- Sunday 7 June 3.30 PM – 5.00 PM
- Sunday 14 June 3.30 PM – 5.00 PM
- Thursday 18 June 11.00 AM -12.30 PM
- Thursday 25 June 11.00 AM -12.30 PM
- Sunday 5 July 5.30 PM – 7.00 PM
- Sunday 12 July 5.30 PM – 7.00 PM
- Thursday 16 July 11.00 AM – 12.30 PM
The schedule is constantly being updated
Past performances:
- Saturday 14 February 3.30 PM – 5 PM
- Sunday 22 February 3.30 PM – 5 PM
- Thursday 26 February 11 AM – 12.30 PM
- Saturday 7 March 3.30 PM – 5 PM
- Saturday 14 March 3.30 PM – 5 PM
- Sunday 22 March 3.30 PM – 5 PM
- Sunday 29 March 3.30 PM – 5 PM
- Saturday 4 April 3.30 PM – 5 PM
- Thursday 9 April 11.00 AM -12.30 PM
Benni Bosetto: the artist
Benni Bosetto (born in Merate in 1987; currently lives and works in Milan) explores the human experience and questions of identity through drawing, sculpture, installation, and performance, focusing on the physicality of bodies. Her work builds an intimate, layered imaginary world in which individuals, organisms, and animal species coexist and contaminate one another.
Understood as an active tool for relating to the world, the body is central to Bosetto’s practice. Desire, sexuality, presence, and vulnerability emerge as fields of inquiry, cultivating what the artist defines as a “form of resistance” to the ways the body is conventionally conceived.
Bosetto manipulates, edits, and layers sources ranging from literature and anthropology to popular culture, cinema, psychoanalysis, and art to create surreal, dreamlike representations. Through the construction of hyper-narratives, the artist shapes a potentially infinite poetic discourse in which each piece emerges from the convergence of multiple origins and imaginaries.
During the initial phase of her creative process, she collects visual, textual, autobiographical, and iconographic materials in an almost compulsive manner. These materials are then layered and transformed to generate new images. Fascinated by the codes of staging and their transformative potential, she creates mutable environments that give rise to an immersive experience for viewers, where different temporal dimensions and perspectives intertwine and coexist.
Some of the institutions and independent spaces that have hosted solo exhibitions by Benni Bosetto include the following
- Museo della Marineria Washington Patrignani, Pesaro (2024)
- Spazio Lima, Milan (2024)
- Villa di Geggiano, Emanuela Campoli, Siena (2022)
- MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (2022)
- Almanac Inn, Turin (2020)
- Kunstraum, London (2019)
- Fonderia Battaglia, Milan (2018)
- Convento de los Domenicos, Eivissa, Spain (2017)
- Tile Project Space, Milan (2016)
Her works and performances have also been featured in group exhibitions at
- Madre – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples (2024)
- Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Turin (2024)
- MAXXI – Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome (2023)
- GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, Bergamo (2022)
- MART – Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Trento (2021)
- Quadriennale d’Arte, Rome (2020)
- Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene (2020)
- Villa Medici, Rome (2019)
- OGR – Officine Grandi Riparazioni, Turin (2018)
- MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (2018)
- Baruchello Foundation, Rome (2018); FutureDome, Milan (2017)
Some works in this exhibition include representations of sexuality and the body. We invite you to take this into consideration before visiting the exhibition.
Public Program
Public Program/
Benni Bosetto
Program of performances by Benni Bosetto
18 April 2026 - from 11 AM to 6.30 PM
Useful information
When will the exhibition open?
The exhibition will run from February 12 to July 19, 2026. The museum is open Thursday to Sunday, from 10.30 AM to 8.30 PM.