Exhibition Opening and DJ Set
FREE ADMISSION
November 22, 2025, 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Cittadella degli Archivi, Via Ferdinando Gregorovius 15, Milan
Timeline: 1993-2025
The Drawn Life of Vedovamazzei
Curated by Irina Zucca Alessandrelli
The artist duo Vedovamazzei, founded in 1991 and composed of Stella Scala and Simeone Crispino, has always looked around with curiosity and irony. To remember what struck them on TV, in the streets, or in newspapers, they used paper, colored pencils, and watercolors — not only because mobile phones didn’t exist at the beginning of their career, but because drawing is, above all, a way of seeing. Those who draw are forced to observe details that escape the photographer, and while drawing, the gaze evolves. Since then, they have never stopped recording and analyzing the surrounding world through drawing.
What they find special, interesting, shocking, tragic, dark, painful, or incredible is drawn in their sketchbooks or on loose sheets of paper. The subject of one of their drawings might be an imaginary Pinocchio comforting a distraught Mickey Mouse among torn tree trunks, or the nape of a friend with her hairstyle rendered in graphite, or a portrait of a fellow artist, such as Stefano Arienti. They draw everywhere — under a beach umbrella, while traveling, or at their desk in front of a newspaper — portraying their daily life for over thirty years. On their papers, one can find the death of American artist Dash Snow, a portrait of Patti Smith in concert, Stella stepping out of the shower, friends lounging on deckchairs, a pigeon at the window, a dead plant — their reality.
For the first time, the archive of their experiences, thoughts, and daily events is presented to the public at the Cittadella degli Archivi, the largest collection of paper documents in Milan’s history.
Outside the exhibition, the yellow neon from 2018 lights up the autumn sky of Niguarda — it reproduces Boccioni’s signature as written by Marinetti on the occasion of a sale of one of his works to the City of Milan, a document unearthed in the Cittadella and transformed by Vedovamazzei into an artwork.
VEDOVAMAZZEI is the artist duo formed by Stella Scala (Naples, 1964) and Simeone Crispino (Naples, 1962), active since 1991 and based in Milan. Their practice merges two distinct personalities into a single language, constantly evolving and experimenting across different media. They describe themselves as “desperately ironic,” confronting ideologies and preconceptions with the aim of questioning identity and certainty. In their works, objects and images are reinterpreted to create unexpected associations that allow reality to be seen from entirely new perspectives.