Nan Goldin: This Will Not End Well

Pirelli HangarBicocca presents “This Will Not End Well”, the first exhibition dedicated to the work of Nan Goldin as a filmmaker. The Italian iteration reunites the biggest corpus of slideshows ever presented together, featuring two additional works, displayed in a museum context for the first time in Europe, alongside a new commission, an immersive sound installation that resonate the emotional impact of Goldin’s installations.

The retrospective is installed in unique buildings designed by Hala Wardé, an architect who frequently works with Goldin. Each building is designed in response to the specific piece. Together they constitute a village. While the title of the exhibition “This Will Not End Well” may seem dark and foreboding, it is also full of ironic humour and warmth. The title is an affirmation of Goldin’s ’characteristically unshakeable joie de vivre.’

The exhibition is comprised of: “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” (1981–2022) her magnum opus; “The Other Side” (1992– 2021) a historical portrait produced as an homage to her trans friends whom she photographed from 1972 to 2010; “Sisters, Saints, Sibyls” (2004–2022) a testament to the trauma of families and suicide; “Fire Leap” (2010–2022) a foray into the world of children; “Memory Lost” (2019–2021) a claustrophobic journey through drug withdrawal; and “Sirens” (2019–2020) a trip into drug ecstasy. In Milan, the installation “Sisters, Saints, Sibyls” (2004–2022) is presented inside the “Cubo,” a space whose dimensions and ceiling height—rising over 20 meters—closely resemble the architectural nature and verticality of La Chapelle de la Salpêtrière in Paris, where the work was originally commissioned and shown in 2004. The installation at Pirelli HangarBicocca is restaged in a form faithful to the original, including two wax sculptural elements: a girl in a bed and a man elevated on a stand, both visible from an overhead viewing platform.
For the exhibition in Pirelli HangarBicocca, curated by Roberta Tenconi with Lucia Aspesi, two additional slideshows are included: “You Never Did Anything Wrong” (2024), Goldin’s first abstract work, born from an ancient myth that an eclipse is caused by animals stealing the sun, is a poetic meditation on life, death and the natural cycles that connect all beings. And “Stendhal Syndrome” (2024), based on six different myths from Ovid’s Metamorphosis that are brought to life by Goldin’s portraits of her friends, in a visual dialogue across time between the artist’s personal experience and her photographs of paintings and sculptures from museums around the world.
Furthermore, the retrospective in the Navate opens with a new sound installation “Bleeding” (2025) by Soundwalk Collective, conceived in close collaboration with the artist as a prelude that guides visitors into Goldin’s symbolic village of slideshows. The duo— composed of contemporary artist Stephan Crasneanscki and producer Simone Merli—has been collaborating with Nan Goldin since 2015, creating soundtracks for projects such as the documentary “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” (2022) which won the Golden Lion at the 79th Venice International Film Festival, Goldin’s slideshow Stendhal Syndrome, scored alongside composer Mica Levi, as well as site-specific sound installations like “The Women’s March, 1789” (2019) presented at Goldin’s exhibition “Visible/Invisible” at the Domaine du Trianon, Versailles, in 2019. Their new commissioned composition “Bleeding” draws on ambient recordings captured on-site during previous iterations of Goldin’s show in Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Continuously recomposed via a custom-made instrument suspended at mid-height in the space, these sonic fragments are transformed into shifting tonalities that saturate the architecture—generating a poetic tread of spectral residues.