Fondazione ICA Milan inaugurates its 2025 exhibition program with a two-person exhibition project, with exceptional curatorship by artist Maurizio Cattelan and Marta Papini. The exhibition is titled Lonely Are All Bridges. Birgit Jürgenssen and Cinzia Ruggeri and will be open to the public from Thursday, January 16 to Saturday, March 15, 2025.

The exhibition celebrates the work of two iconic female artists, Birgit Jürgenssen (Vienna, 1949 - 2003) and Cinzia Ruggeri (Milan, 1942 - 2019), who have never met in person, but are ideally in dialogue through their works, visions and reflections.

The title of the exhibition is taken from a line by Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann, “lonely are all bridges”, which summarizes the experimental spirit of two artists whose work pushes beyond conventions, challenges the boundaries between arts and builds bridges capable of crossing different disciplines, transforming the everyday into a narrative with a strong critical dimension. Born in the late 1940s and trained in the 1960s, both addressed the role of women in society, weaving together themes related to the body, identity and transformation.  Their common fascination with ornament and accessory, interpreted as an extension of the body and a tool for conquering one's own space, traces the red thread of an exhibition that invites reflection on the relationship between aesthetics, politics and identity that still innervates our daily horizon.

The exhibition brings together the research of two fundamental figures in contemporary art, interpreted for the occasion by the curatorial vision of Maurizio Cattelan and Marta Papini and narrated to the public with an unprecedented key to understanding. The exhibition is made possible by the collaboration with the Estate Birgit Jürgenssen, Vienna, and the Archivio Cinzia Ruggeri, Milan.