Presented at Pirelli HangarBicocca, This Will Not End Well is the Italian iteration dedicated to Nan Goldin’s work as a filmmaker. The retrospective unfolds across a constellation of purpose-built structures designed by architect Hala Wardé, a frequent collaborator of the artist. Each building is conceived in dialogue with a specific piece; together, they form an intimate village that choreographs the viewer’s journey.

The exhibition brings together six seminal works. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1981–2022) anchors the presentation as Goldin’s magnum opus. The Other Side (1992–2021) offers a historic portrait dedicated to the artist’s trans friends, photographed from 1972 to 2010. Sisters, Saints, Sibyls (2004–2022) confronts the trauma of family histories and suicide, while Fire Leap (2010–2022) traces the worlds of children with lyrical intensity. Memory Lost (2019–2021) immerses viewers in a claustrophobic journey through drug withdrawal, and Sirens (2019–2020) evokes the rapture of drug ecstasy.

Curated by Roberta Tenconi with Lucia Aspesi, the retrospective also premieres two additional slideshows. You Never Did Anything Wrong (2024), Goldin’s first abstract work, draws on an ancient myth in which animals steal the sun during an eclipse to meditate on life, death, and the cycles that bind all living beings. Stendhal Syndrome (2024) threads six myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses through portraits of Goldin’s friends and images of paintings and sculptures photographed in museums worldwide, creating a visual dialogue between personal experience and art history.

A new sound installation by Soundwalk Collective opens the journey through the Navate. Conceived in close collaboration with Goldin, the composition by Stephan Crasneanscki and Simone Merli acts as a prelude, guiding visitors into the artist’s symbolic village of slideshows. Drawing on ambient recordings from earlier iterations in Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Berlin, the soundscape preserves the overlapping murmurs that drift between pavilions, weaving a poetic thread across time and space.

Pirelli HangarBicocca
Via Chiese 2,
20126 Milano

11 October 2025  – 15 February 2026
Thursday—Sunday, 10.30 am —8.30 pm

About Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin (born in Washington D.C. in 1953) is one of the most high-profile artists of our time. Her work’s exploration of the human experience is legendary and has profoundly influenced subsequent generations. Her first work, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, documents life in Provincetown, New York, Berlin and London beginning in the 1970s and 80s and up to the present day. Goldin photographed the world of her inner circle of creative, bohemian friends with raw tenderness. Her photographs give us snapshots of intimacy and coupling, the quotidian and wild parties, and the struggle between autonomy and dependency.

About Pirelli HangarBicocca

Pirelli HangarBicocca is a non-profit foundation dedicated to producing and promoting contemporary art. It was conceived and is supported by Pirelli. Established in 2004, Pirelli HangarBicocca has become a benchmark institution for the international art community, local public and region. It is a museum that is free of charge, accessible and open, and a place for experimentation, research and dissemination, where art is a point of reflection on the most topical themes of contemporary culture and society.

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