Dormienti: traversing Mimmo Paladino’s sleep
- Noemi Cattaneo
- Jul 15
- 2 min read
At Palazzo Citterio, I Dormienti (The Sleepers) by Mimmo Paladino transform Sala Stirling into a space to be traversed, where light, matter, and silence accompany visitors along the threshold between presence and absence.
Curated by Noemi Cattaneo
Where one sleeps is with every step downward: an underground place, submerged in dense sounds and images of silence.
It is in the Sala Stirling of Palazzo Citterio, where thirty-two Dormienti (Sleepers) lie-along with us, as we pass among them.
Descending means approaching a threshold. With each step, the outside world recedes, and one gradually enters the darkness of an architectural cavity that, in order to rise above ground, must first sink beneath it.
The exhibition of the works Dormienti (The Sleepers) by the artist Mimmo Paladino, curated by Lorenzo Madaro and realized by La Grande Brera in close collaboration with the Archivio Paladino, is open to visitors from May 16 to July 26.
The artist’s works are terracotta sculptures in the shape of human beings emerging from shards and fragments, from which they take form and by which, at the same time, they are covered.
This sedimentation of matter into human forms, gathered in a fetal position, preserves the dispersed nature of the remains while, at the same time, retaining the care involved in having been collected and laid to rest.
The works appear as living beings, endowed with the weight and the ability of sleep to carry them elsewhere.
Asleep in amniotic pools of light, they are not always completely immersed in them, but remain gently touched by currents of shadow.
We, the visitors, navigate in suspension and, the more we move through the air, the more light reveals itself as an element that gently touches these sculptural beings and embraces them. For some figures, however, light seems to have withdrawn or, having always remained motionless, to have become an unreachable destination for those who were seized by sleep too soon.
Although the sculptures seem to inhabit the depths of an abyss, their sleep brings us together on common ground, made of sounds hovering in the air, thoughts, and shadows, our own, that fall upon the works as we move closer to each of them.
Mimmo Paladino addresses active visitors, who move through the space and freely determine the time of pause and the moment of passage, drawn toward another space.
In this dynamic interplay between stillness and movement, what is created is not merely a contemplative space, but a space in which we are immersed and that we can move through.
On the other hand, if it is true that we sleep with our eyes closed, it is equally true that we can continue to dream with our eyes open, moving through places suspended between the realm of imagination and the depth of reality.
Visitor Information:
Location: Palazzo Citterio (Via Brera, 14)
Dates: May 16 - July 26, 2026.
Opening Hours: Tuesday - Sunday: 8:30 AM - 18:00 PM
Comments