From November 1 to 6, 2026, IBSA Foundation brings Morestalgia, a work by Riccardo Benassi, to Lugano, on view to the public in the Hall of the LAC. On November 3 at 6:30 PM, a talk with the artist, moderated by Chiara Nuzzi, is also scheduled.
SciArt has long explored the dialogue between science and art, alternating exhibitions, talks, and encounters with artists and scientists, offering the public new perspectives and meanings on the world around us. The project now brings to Lugano Morestalgia, a work by Riccardo Benassi that invites reflection on how social media and shared online experiences are changing the way we experience nostalgia.
The work Morestalgia
Morestalgia, created by Riccardo Benassi in 2019 with the support of the Italian Council, is an installation built around an LED screen that can be penetrated by the human body. By passing through it, the public becomes aware of their own physical presence and that of other visitors, in a collective sensory experience, becoming part of a situation created by the artist with this very aim.
The title comes from a neologism coined by Benassi to describe a painful feeling typical of the post-Internet era.
Riccardo Benassi explains:
“I called 'morestalgia' a specific type of nostalgia whose pain resembles that caused by envy more than that of true nostalgia. The perception of a painful lack, which each of us translates to ourselves as loss, whose direct reference is other human beings we esteem and their shared experiences online.”
The Talk with the artist
On November 3 at 6:30 PM, in the Hall of the LAC, Riccardo Benassi meets the public in a 45-minute talk, moderated by curator Chiara Nuzzi, which starts from the installation and goes beyond it.
At the center of the conversation is "morestalgia": the painful feeling of nostalgia that the artist associates with the post-Internet era, tied to language and the presence of the body. The encounter is an opportunity to reflect together on the transformations in how we live the present, increasingly suspended between the physical and virtual dimensions.
Riccardo Benassi
Riccardo Benassi (Cremona, Italy, 1982) lives and works in Berlin (DE), Bergamo (IT), and online. He uses text and sound to question the limits of technology from an existentialist perspective, implementing a poetic language in time-based environmental installations, video essays, performances, and spatial interventions created for public and private commissions.
Recently, his work has been exhibited at MAXXI in Rome (2025); Museion in Bolzano (2024); Museo della Permanente in Milan (2024); Palazzo Grassi / Punta della Dogana, Venice (2023); Fondazione ICA in Milan (solo exhibition, 2023); MAXXI in L'Aquila (2022); GAM in Turin (2022); ar/ge kunst, Bolzano (2022); Macro in Rome (2022); Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement, Geneva (2021); MoCA in Taipei, Taiwan (2021); ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien in Karlsruhe (solo exhibition, 2020); Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève (solo exhibition, 2019); Galleria ZERO... in Milan (2019); and Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (solo exhibition, 2016). Since 2013, Riccardo Benassi has been a professor of Sound Design at the Politecnico delle Arti in Bergamo (IT) and, since 2019, a lecturer in Visual Arts at NABA in Milan (IT).
He has published Letters from the Passenger Seat with No One at the Wheel (Mousse Publishing, 2010), Briefly, Dance (Danilo Montanari, 2012), Attimi Fondamentali (Mousse Publishing, 2012), Sicilia Bambaataa (NERO Publishing, 2015), Morestalgia (NERO Publishing, 2020), Daily Dense Dance Desiderio (Distanz Publishing, 2023).
Chiara Nuzzi
Chiara Nuzzi is Curator and Editorial Manager at ICA Milano since 2018. From 2023 she also serves as Collection’s Curator at Fondazione Bonollo in Thiene (Italy). Her main fields of interest include transdisciplinary, transcultural and collaborative art practices in which the politics of representation, acts of imagination, decolonial and ecological thinking are central. Always interested in the work of artists addressing key issues of our time, her approach combines artistic, experiential and theoretical practice in order to imagine and activate alternative transformative modes to establish communities with and through art, starting from an interest in the present and its fragilities.
Previous projects include collaborations with institutions such as Istituto Svizzero (Milan/Rome); ar/ge Kunst, Bozen; MART Museum of Trento and Rovereto; Le Narcissio, Nice (FR); Independent Art Fair, Bruxelles. Nuzzi recently curated solo shows by Cemile Sahin (ICA Milano, 2025); Paul Chan (F. Bonollo, 2025), Augustas Serapinas (ICA Milano, 2025); Erika Verzutti (ICA Milano, 2024); Camille Henrot & Estelle Hoy (ICA Milano, 2023); Simone Forti (ICA Milano, 2019).
In 2026 she courted the 7ì8th edition of the Arnaldo Pomodoro Prize for Sculpture and the exhibition Dancing at the Edge of the Worlds with artists Yu Ji, Dan Lie, Cong Tung Truong, Bronwyn Katz and Luana Vitra. In 2023 she curated the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro’s Project Room program in Milan, dedicated to Lito Kattou’s and Paul Maheke’s sculptural work and research. Among her recent publications there are: Dancing at the Edge of the Worlds, (Lenz Press, 2026); Simone Fattal. A Breeze Over the Mediterranean (Mousse Publishing, 2025); Camille Henrot & Estelle Hoy. Jus d’Orange (NERO editions, 2023); Rebecca Moccia. Ministry of Loneliness (Humboldt Books, 2023).
What is SciArt?
SciArt is an IBSA Foundation project born to foster cross-pollination between scientific and artistic disciplines and to offer the community new keys for interpreting today's world.
Science and the arts have always coexisted across time and space. Though with different methodologies and aims, artists and scientists alike observe the world around them, opening up new perspectives, interpretations, and meanings.
Through various event formats and digital products, SciArt focuses on artistic creations that have been transformed through interaction with scientists, discoveries, and research institutes. Audiences can engage with these proposals and hear, directly from artists and scientists, how such different realities influence one another.
The project fits perfectly within the Foundation's mission, which since 2012 has been committed to spreading authoritative scientific culture, sharing principles and knowledge in accessible language, and raising awareness on topics related to science, culture, and individual wellbeing.
