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he best exhibitions are not only situated in physical spaces, walls, buildings, warehouses, heritage sites, public parks or open areas, but also remain lodged in our minds. In this age of sprinting images, where even stills are rapidly scrolled past and soon forgotten, if a work stays with us, that may be one, if not the defining, measure of its value.
This trait becomes more evident in a biennale, triennale, major art fair or festival, where multiple sections, booths and pavilions showcase creative individuals of unfamiliar names and unknown backgrounds. Today, the ritual of exchanging business cards at such venues has significantly declined, if not disappeared altogether, so the work itself serves as introduction to the artists or collectives, and to their ideas, processes, concerns and contexts.
Almost two months have passed since I visited the 24th Triennale Milano International, a major exhibition featuring the work of 341 individuals from 73 countries. Coordinated by 28 curators, the event comprises eight exhibitions spanning art, design, architecture and other practices, often blurring the boundaries between conventional disciplines.
Titled Inequalities (May 13 - November 9, 2025), the show “is dedicated to the issue of the growing inequalities that characterise cities and the contemporary world.” With pavilions and projects from across the globe, it compels viewers to confront the realities of their surroundings and of existence itself. As Triennale President Stefano Boeri put it: “We are born unequal, all of us. Not only because of the genes we inherit, but because of our families, our surroundings, the particular corner of the world in which we are born. From the very beginning, we are shaped by differences and marked by inequality.”
The Milano Triennale illustrates this by inviting creative individuals from a fragmented world. Visitors encounter ultra-contemporary technological work alongside that made from familiar materials, for instance, in Togo’s debut pavilion Out of Fashion: The Waste Lab, made from long strips of discarded denim stitched together into vast entryways.
Participants from diverse political, economic and geographic contexts comment on the present moment from unexpected angles. Amos Gitai’s short film, for example, shot on a Tel Aviv street, revives the voice of the biblical prophet Amos through actors from both Israel and Palestine. Their contemporary denunciation of corruption and violence echoes the prophet’s ancient warnings, suggesting that history, conflict and the city remain inextricably linked.
The digital prints of U ur Gallenku highlight global connections, but through stark contrasts. His Parallel Realities series, created for the United Nations SDG Action Campaign, features six composite images, each split into two sharply contrasting halves. These pairings expose brutal inequalities: between developed and developing nations, between wealth and poverty, peace and conflict.
In I Am a Woman, one half shows a smiling girl with healthy hair and clean clothes; the other reveals a wounded face, marked by scratches and bruises. In Children Are Children First - Seesaw, a child sits on a playground seesaw whose plank morphs into the barrel of a military tank, ridden by another child. The backgrounds also shift: from a manicured park to a war-ravaged city.
The Lebanese pavilion turns it into a powerful metaphor for a world edging towards extinction due to war, economic inequality and environmental collapse.5
The Lebanese pavilion turns it into a powerful metaphor for a world edging towards extinction due to war, economic inequality and environmental collapse.
Two more items lay bare social disparities. In Catwalk, a queue of displaced people - men, women, and children - clutching their belongings, fades into a runway of fashion models in high-end designer wear. Another image connects three children with backpacks walking to a modern school, with a lone child carrying a UNICEF ration bag towards a settlement of makeshift tents.
A similar concern is explored in Atlas of the Changing World, an exhibition curated by journalist Maurizio Molinari. Based on data, Molinari’s installation features discs and sheets mapping conflict zones, gender gaps, migration and climate change. The result is a visual reminder that we do not inhabit a single, unified world, but rather a globe fractured by layers of inequality.
This clinical, data-driven approach to understanding place and identity is echoed in Saudi Arabia’s debut pavilion, Maghras: A Farm for Experimentation. The project maps the Al Ahsa region, known for its traditional practices in agriculture, basketry, weaving and folk storytelling. Curated by Lulu Almana and Sara Al Omran, the pavilion features an interdisciplinary installation by Leen Ajlan, Mohammed Alfaraj and Sawtasura. Their work reflects the history, metaphors and ecosystem of a land once envisioned as the nation’s “breadbasket” during the 1960s period of modernisation.
The pavilion, Maghras, a term referring to the area defined by four palm trees, offers topographical maps, illustrations of artisans at work and a woven ceiling using traditional basketry techniques. Suspended from a palm-like structure are sculptural forms resembling date clusters, crafted in diverse materials and methods. Adjacent to this is Mohammad Alfaraj’s recreation of a segment of his ancestral land: a small pond populated by leaves, twigs, fish and frogs. The work evokes local tales blending fact and folklore, observation and superstition.
Like the Saudi Arabian pavilion, the Lebanese entry reclaims and preserves a vanishing past. Curated by Ala Tannir, the exhibition From My Heart I Blow Kisses to the Sea and Houses recounts the story of a coastal Beirut residence from the 1920s. Now under threat from natural erosion, poor urban governance and aggressive property development, the house’s fate mirrors that of many structures in cities grappling with rapid urbanisation.
The installation features work by Khyam Allami, Lara Tabet and Ala Tannir, alongside a 40-minute video by Panos Aprahamian and Vicken Avakian, capturing a conversation with the home’s long-time resident. Through personal recollections, the film evokes not just the life of the house but also the broader history of Beirut.
Also included are textile panels with cyanotype prints documenting the home’s wooden interior doors, alongside a mashrabiya-style window crafted in Lebanese cedar by Jana Traboulsi. In focusing on a single home on the brink of disappearance, the Lebanese pavilion turns it into a powerful metaphor for a world edging towards extinction due to war, economic inequality and environmental collapse. Perhaps the only way to preserve such places is to reimagine them in memory, or in art, the collective memory of humanity.
The writer is a visual artist, an art critic, a curator and a professor at the School of Visual Arts and Design, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. He can be contacted on quddusmirzagmail.com.