MILAN.- From October 11, 2025 to February 15, 2026, 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.
“I have always wanted to be a filmmaker. My slideshows are films made up of stills,” says Nan Goldin.
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) will be 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 will be restaged in a form faithful to the original, including the sculptural elements, visible from an elevated viewing platform.
For the exhibition in Pirelli HangarBicocca, curated by Roberta Tenconi with Lucia Aspesi, two additional slideshows have been 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 by the experimental sound art collective Soundwalk Collective, conceived in close collaboration with the artist as a prelude that guides visitors into Goldin’s symbolic village of slideshows. The duo—artist and composer Stephan Crasneanscki and composer 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, and immersive sound environments for 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 draws on ambient recordings captured during previous iterations of Goldin’s show in Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Berlin. This soundscape preserves the overlapping sounds that drift between the pavilions, generating a poetic tread between time and spaces.
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.
Of the generation whose experiences were defined by the freedom of life before AIDS and an alternative world outside normative society, Goldin’s work also stands as a document of the times. Around 1980 Goldin began presenting her slideshows in various clubs and public venues in New York, as well as at underground cinemas and film festivals in Europe. She updated and reedited her slideshow every time and used multiple projectors, which she operated against the background of an eclectic soundtrack. Goldin’s ability to revisit these slideshows has since formed the core of her artistic practice. Over the past 40 years Goldin has produced a dozen different slideshows – from portraits of her friends to accounts of traumatic family events. Since then, she has added elements into her works such as moving images, voices and archival materials.
Alongside Goldin’s influence on art and the art world, it is also difficult to think of today’s fashion and advertising photography without reflecting on her ground-breaking paradigms of visual expression.
The artist
Many international institutions have hosted Nan Goldin’s solo exhibitions, including the National Gallery of Australia (2023), Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2022), Art Institute of Chicago (2020), Tate Modern, London (2019), Triennale di Milano (2017), MoMA Museum of Modern Art, New York (2016), Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro (2012), Louvre Museum, Paris (2010), Kiasma, Helsinki (2008), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2007, 2001), La Chapelle de la Salpêtrière, Paris (2004), Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Quebec (2003), Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Museu Serralves, Porto, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2002), Reina Sofía, Madrid (2001), Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (1998), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (1997), Fotomuseum Winterthur (1997), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1996), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (1996), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (1994), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1993), and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (1985).
Her work has been featured in multiple editions of the Whitney Biennial in New York (1985, 1993, 1995) and in the Biennale of Sydney (1996). After four decades of artistic practice, she was honored with a prestigious invitation to exhibit at the 2022 Venice Biennale with her slideshow Sirens (2019– 2021).
Goldin was appointed Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 2006 and has received several prestigious awards, including the Kering Women in Motion Award for Photography (2025), the Käthe Kollwitz Prize, Berlin (2022), the Centenary Medal from London’s Royal Photographic Society (2018), the Edward MacDowell Medal, New Hampshire (2012), and the Hasselblad Award, Gothenburg, Sweden (2007).
P.A.I.N. and ground-breaking paradigms of visual expression
Nan Goldin has always grappled with social issues such as gender, mental health and AIDS, albeit through various approaches. Memory Lost which also forms part of the current exhibition, is an evocation of the darkest sides of drug addiction. In 2017 Goldin founded P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), a direct-action group that specifically targeted the Sackler family. The group holds the billionaire family accountable for igniting the epidemic opioid overdose crisis. The Sacklers are a major donor to many prominent international museums. However, many of these institutions have reacted to pressure from P.A.I.N. and removed all trace of the Sackler name from their premises.
The international tour
The international tour exhibition is organized by Moderna Museet, Stockholm (29 October 2022 – 26 February 2023), in collaboration with Stedejlik Museum Amsterdam (31 August 2023 – 28 January 2024), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (23 November 2024 – 6 April 2025), Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (11 October 2025 – 15 February 2026), and Grand Palais Rmn, Paris (March - June 2026). The tour is curated by Fredrik Liew, Chief Curator, Moderna Museet, while the exhibition in Pirelli HangarBicocca is curated by Roberta Tenconi, Chief Curator, Pirelli HangarBicocca, with Lucia Aspesi, Curator, Pirelli HangarBicocca.
Catalog
A comprehensive catalogue is produced to accompany the exhibition, with 216 pages, 140 of which are illustrated, and texts by Vince Aletti, Thomas Beard, Guido Costa, Marvin Heiferman, Roni Horn, Patrick Radden Keefe, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Fredrik Liew, Andrea Lissoni, Gabor Maté, Cookie Mueller, Eileen Myles, Alfred Pacquement, Darryl Pinckney, Rene Ricard, Lucy Sante, Sarah Schulman, Anne Swärd, Hala Wardé and David Wojnarowicz. The catalogue is published in English and is distributed internationally by Steidl Verlag.
