The ongoing iteration of the eminent global design festival, the Milan Design Week 2025, seems to be conquering creative tapestries and imaginations from over the world, making Milan the neural centre of all things design from April 7 – 13, 2025. At the forefront of its annual design fair, Salone del Mobile.Milano, lies a cultural programme with a project in which art, light and sound interlace to achieve a captivating intensity: Robert Wilson’s Mother. The first installation to be open to the public for the design event, Mother is the American artist’s homage to Michelangelo’s magnum opus, taking the stage at the Museo della Pietà Rondanini – Castello Sforzesco. With music by Arvo Pärt and in collaboration with the Municipality of Milan, the installation remains on display until May 18, 2025, bridging the design week with Milano Art Week. “When I first saw Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà, I sat there in front of it for more than an hour. I felt a powerful energy, an almost mystical presence,” says Wilson in an official statement. “It is like an open window, a space suspended between the visible and the invisible. She asked me to listen, to imagine, to lose myself in her,” he adds.

This year, with the biennial Euroluce unfolding in Milan as part of Salone, Wilson, who is deemed a master in the creative use of light, has conceived a “total artwork” dedicated to Michelangelo’s masterpiece, one of the most iconic artworks housed in the city. With due respect for the display designed by Michele de Lucchi at the Ospedale Spagnolo in 2015, Wilson breathes life into his own interpretation of the muse. The immersive installation unravels against the power of the ‘unfinished’—at the cusp of matter and thought—in a dramaturgical dialogue with the Stabat Mater, the medieval prayer’s rendition by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. “Perhaps the fact that it is unfinished makes it so extraordinary. She (Pietà Rondanini) allowed me to exist in a different time, a different space in which to think, to dream,” explains the artist in a statement. “Pietà doesn’t really need a setting. It just needs a space, a breath, silence, so that those who observe her can lose themselves in their own thoughts and emotions,” he opines further.

With the music by Pärt injecting a profound reflection on the dimension of time and space, Mother transcends conventional scenography and its probably constraints, leaving the work open to both - a certain degree of interpretation as well as a multitude of possibilities. The space—seemingly one of respite and for 'breathing'—invites viewers to immerse themselves in contemplation. The spirited dance between light, shadow and sound yields an experience that welcomes the spectator, the pursuit of their inner space and an emotional resonance. Wilson and Pärt share this temporal vision of time and space, working together in their preferred semantic language of light and music, respectively, to render play in "structured silences and vibrant expectations", as stated in Salone's official release. “Light is not just a technical element, it is a living presence, an actual protagonist. Light is not a detail to be added later, it is the beginning of everything,” Wilson shares in a comment on the importance of light in his projects. The immersive experience thus turns music into an architecture of silence, and light into the very spirit of form.

A common thread between music and sculpture reveals itself through the presentation - a striking commission for the design fair, taking the form of a 30-minute sequence of music, lights and images repeated itinerantly. Together, they welcome spectators and allow them to feel free sans narrations or explanations. Through the design week, Mother hosts live performances of the Stabat Mater by the Estonian ensemble Vox Clamantis, conducted by Jaan-Eik Tulve, and by the Italian ensemble La Risonanza, conducted by Fabio Bonizzoni.

‘Mother’ by Robert Wilson is on view from April 6 – May 18, 2025, at the Museo Pietà Rondanini in Castello Sforzesco, Milan, Italy.

Keep up with STIR's coverage of Milan Design Week 2025, where we spotlight the most compelling exhibitions, presentations and installations from top studios, designers and brands. Dive into the highlights of Euroluce 2025 and explore all the design districts—Fuorisalone, 5Vie, Brera, Isola, Durini and beyond—alongside the faceted programme of Salone del Mobile.Milano this year.