MILAN.- MUDEC (Museum of Cultures, Milan) presents its new cross-cultural project, Travelogue: Stories of journeys, migration and diaspora. Dedicated to the theme of travel and curated by Katya Inozemtseva and Sara Rizzo, the exhibition highlights the genesis of MUDEC’s collections, made up of artifacts donated by enthusiasts, travelers and researchers.

Starting from the “materiality” of travel (means of transportation, souvenirs, suitcases, etc.), the exhibition opens up a new perspective for a different understanding not only of tourism/travel, but also of the migrations and diasporas that have marked and continue to mark recent history.

Migration is at the heart of the site-specific installation by Albanian artist Adrian Paci (b. 1969) that preceded the exhibition in November 2024. Il vostro cielo fu mare, il vostro mare fu cielo [Your sky was sea, your sea was sky] is set up in the Agora, the museum’s central space designed by David Chipperfield Architects, and is dedicated to the sea as a political and social space, dense with often tragic stories. After his installation the artist also created a series of works (At Sea, 2025) for the Travelogue exhibition where he reinterprets the details of some of these seas by transferring them to painting, without giving up the dimension of absence: it is what is not seen that makes the content of these images universal.

Another section is dedicated to diaspora as addressed by contemporary art. Prisoners of the War (2025) is the new site-specific video installation by Yervant Gianikian (b. 1942) and Angela Ricci Lucchi, produced by MUDEC. Starting from public and private archival footage, the two artists reinterpret them through a peculiar method based on isolating details, slowing down the speed, and toning down the original color of the films. It is a matter of re-filming in order to re-signify, to create a connection between images of the past and current issues: emigration, ethnic problems, colonialism, racism. The “fragmented visions“ in this five-channel video installation reflect on the fate of the Roma and Armenian people after the genocides they suffered in Nazi camps and in Eastern Türkiye, respectively. They speak of transhumance, social inequality, but also of an “exoticism at hand“ and exile without return.

The heart of the exhibition is the journey as seen through the lens of ethnographic objects. Travelogue begins with an introductory section on mythical journeys, counting figures associated with European and world cultures, such as Charon, Dante, and Naylamp. It then moves on to the themes of nomadism around the world; metaphorical journeys through meditation, prayer, states of hallucination; and souvenirs. Objects intended for the domestic market are compared with others created for the mass tourism market, including small sculptures, fakes and replicas. The 20th century was also marked by a new type of “traveling object,“ in which items were collected in the field as evidence of cooperation and social projects. Another section is devoted to travel diaries, photo albums, sketchbooks, maps, and other small objects that travelers of the late 19th and 20th centuries used to tell their personal stories and experiences.

The Agora curved display cases house an extra special section of Travelogue dedicated to various means of transportation, ancient and modern, from the camel to the Lambretta, from the caballito de totora to the Concorde. This was made possible thanks to the collaboration with the National Museum of Science and Technology “Leonardo da Vinci“ in Milan.

The exhibition finally extends beyond the walls of the museum with a participatory mural project in the San Siro district by Agus Rúcula and Elena Mistrello and a poster art activation in the Via Tortona district in collaboration with IED Milan.

Travelogue is also is also completed by a rich program of events to reflect on some of the key concepts of the exhibition.

Finally, the “Travelogue“ project will be presented in the third issue of the magazine MU - MUDEC United, which will propose in-depth articles on the theme.