Still Olympic - Collective project curated by Samantha Lina

From 6 to 22 February, in conjunction with the Milan–Cortina sporting event, Samantha Lina, artist and creative director of Cavità e Fuochi, hosts “Still Olympic” at her studio in Palazzo delle Stelline.

This collective project brings together works and testimonies by artists and speakers centered on the theme of the Olympic Games, offering a transversal reflection on the original meaning of the Olympics and of the creative act itself. In the title, “Olympic” recalls Mount Olympus—home of the gods and inaccessible to humankind—while “Still” describes the artist’s endeavor to arrest, yet allow to vibrate, the mystery that connects the artwork to the world.

In-depth studio events by invitation, followed by online content

Ars Requirit Totum Hominem: reflections on the threshold of the invisible, a dialogue between art and philosophy with Damiano Fina and Susanna Taraschi

(in studio, Saturday 7 February at 5:00 PM)

All the Gold of the Olympic Flame: life testimonies between former Olympic champion Giuliano Razzoli and Giovanni Cimurri, torchbearer of the Milan–Cortina 2026 Olympics

(in studio, Monday 9 February at 6:00 PM)

The Great Movement of the Olympic Truce: reflections between myth and astrology, curated by Patrizia Troni

(in studio, Wednesday 18 February at 5:00 PM)

Margherita Carrara de Sambuy

Graduated in Industrial Design, she is a passionate researcher of innovative forms. Digital modeling, 3D solidification, lighting… the work created for Still Olympic is a mask in search of an invincible champion. Unable to be worn, the mask presents itself as an illuminated form that ignites our perception of the future, stimulating emotional and adrenaline-driven circuits.

Maria Dolores Cattaneo

Is containing emptiness a way of inhabiting it? In the bottles the artist calls “of happiness,” a precious void is held—one that Maria Dolores, former violinist of the RAI Symphony Orchestra, filled with music for decades. In the exhibited works, the artist creates spaces for light play and shifting reflections enriched with enamels, powders, and Murano glass pearls by her Japanese artist friend Yukina Fiorese. Together, the bottles form a team, releasing happiness through the interplay of their colors and filling themselves with a single sound—a precious act of listening.

Anita Cerrato

Her work centers on Kintsugi, the Japanese restoration technique she learned from Eastern masters in Kyoto and has taught for years at her school in Milan. For Still Olympic, she presents a 1930s sculpture—a skier signed by Tarcisio Tosin. Through Kintsugi, Olympic gold becomes a precious material and a powerful metaphor for the immense physical and human resources that differently abled athletes must mobilize in order to compete and strive for the podium.

Damiano Fina

Butoh dancer, writer, performer, and philosophical counselor, he presents his film Spring of a Dancer—praised by international film festival juries with several awards and nominations—and meets educator and counselor Susanna Taraschi in a studio talk between art and philosophy dedicated to the great endeavor of personal fulfillment. Spring of a Dancer begins on a snow-covered peak and represents the alchemical forces animating the human being. His butoh dance plunges into deep darkness and returns bearing luminous pearls. Damiano provokes the scandal of the flesh, urges the dismantling of rules that claim to govern Nature, and manifests his imaginative urgency in deconstructed faces and existential spaces where everything is still possible.

Alison Grace Koehler

Performer and poet of glass, she has performed in numerous institutional spaces and art festivals with live choreographies weaving together light, color, and poetry. For Still Olympic, she presents her Suspensions: transparent, colored, floating glass forms that capture light and, through the magic of their fragments, evoke the movement of all things. What will remain of the Olympics are memories of great emotions, while flashes of light will continue to play among the iridescent medals Alison suspends, in praise of an inexhaustible flow of light and color.

Emanuele Gregolin

For twenty years he has painted with refined symbolic inquiry. His canvases are exhibited in major galleries and museums. In this exhibition he presents two works dedicated to Milan, following his customary shift of scene: from the gray from which the city’s symbols emerge, to the dazzling colors of the special event. Milan under the spotlight becomes “M”—the initial of many Milans, spoken in many languages. This great event too will pass, the snow will melt… the artist asks: “Will water save us?”

Marco Pesatori

In the 1970s he lived within the vortex of the Fluxus movement, participating in Dada-situationist experiences adjacent to Gruppo 63, later recounted in his novel Il Trigono del Sole (Feltrinelli). He then withdrew for several years into a Zen monastery, later becoming one of the most important scholars of astrology. Stelliums are significant planetary conjunctions that, in astrology, evoke compactness and resilience. In Still Olympic, his Stelliums oscillate in silent forms dictated by the rhythm of breathing, between neuro-cellular microcosms and magical macrocosms—galaxies that are both centrifugal and centripetal, embodying the impermanence of perceptual freedom that underlies all magic and poetry.

Elisa Pescatore

Artist and set designer, she creates installations, including public art projects (Wood&Paste, 2022). Thanks to her multidisciplinary background, Elisa combines visual talent with a never superficial critical inquiry into the present. In the installation Thaumà, reworked for Still Olympic, attention moves toward a threshold that may be a crevasse—or perhaps a limit. Everything is suspended in the fragile alternation between orientation and disturbance. We find ourselves in a place that is high–other. Is thaumazein remaining? Lingering? A space of sky and contemplation?

Giuliano Razzoli

Former gold medalist at the XXI Winter Olympic Games and multi-awarded World Cup champion, he currently comments on post-race coverage for RAI during the ongoing Winter Olympics. “Razzo,” the champion’s nickname, appears as a special guest in the studio together with his friend and entrepreneur Giovanni Cimurri, torchbearer for Milan–Cortina. Together they testify that great achievements belong to everyone and are often reached through teamwork that enriches all—always working like champions, with tenacity and passion.

Michele Rigoni

Creative director and filmmaker of a historic Milan-based multimedia factory, in recent years he has also expressed his creativity through collage. The two mountains on display emerge from his practice of recomposing hundreds of vintage postcards, later inhabited by figures cut from other “stories.” His works narrate the lives of characters relocated into poetically evasive spaces and times, captivating the viewer with a sense of estrangement and immersing the gaze in the vibrant energy of his creative flow.

Alice Sciancalepore

Visual artist and photographer, her research explores the relationship between image, body, and identity. Vi porto con me (I Carry You With Me), the installation created for Still Olympic, is a mountain made of crocheted twine. The holes in its embroidery sift, retain, and allow penetration by two keys that symbolically represent original principles—the masculine and the feminine—that the artist recognizes within herself. By pulling the threads of the embroidery, the mountain becomes a lived experience to be carried along.

Patrizia Troni

Astrologer, author, and contributor to major national publications, for Still Olympic she interprets the symbol of the Olympic Games through an astrological lens. The Olympic flag with its rings—designed by Pierre de Coubertin in 1914 by interweaving the colors of all national flags—was intended to draw attention back to the origins of the Olympics, when games dedicated to the gods imposed peace through the “Olympic Truce.” Mars and Venus are the planetary and mythological symbols expressed in the Olympic Games through extraordinary athletic performance and the passionate participation of the public.

Pengpeng Wang

A perceptive interpreter of the international art scene, he is a multifaceted artist who presents for Still Olympic a work—accompanied by an illustrated book—with a pop aesthetic. His Pinocchio is a vividly colored champion tackling a giant slalom, moving through adventures that unfold in a spiral motion. Up, up and then down, down—Pinocchio trains in the integration of opposites, his nose becoming the flexible pole to overcome. We take part in a coming-of-age narrative that traverses temptations, fragilities, and fears, ultimately supporting the strengthening of the self.

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