Respiro)(Tribute is the first solo exhibition by the artist Oriana Persico, curated by Michela Santoro, at the Leonardo da Vinci Museum of Science and Technology in Milan from 4 to 6 June 2026.
Presented to the public as part of the Green&Blue Festival 2026, Respiro)(Tribute is an immersive space that intertwines art, scientific research and environmental data in a journey dedicated to Breath: a powerful and intimate message, delicate and universal, straddling personal experience and collective, symbolic sharing, embracing society and the planet.
The exhibition is a tribute to the possibility of breathing again after a pause and takes shape from a rupture: on 18 July 2022, Salvatore Iaconesi, Oriana Persico’s partner in life and art, passed away; their union gave rise to the duo AOS/Art is Open Source and subsequently the research centre HER she Loves Data.
From that personal and existential breath-holding emerged a new breath, which found its first realisation in pneumOS. The Knowledge of Air is Open Source, the work that followed the long and profound silence after Salvatore’s death and is dedicated to him.
Commissioned by the Municipality of Ravenna as part of the European DARE project, pneumOS originated as a public, sensory and interactive work capable of translating data on the city’s air quality into sound and movement in real time, stimulating a new capacity to perceive the environment in order to generate meaning, cohesion and social engagement. With the support of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, the work represents Italian contemporary art at Expo Osaka 2025, combining innovation, data, science and sustainability. For six months, pneumOS will be on display within the Italian Pavilion, themed ‘Art Regenerates Life’.
Respiro)(Tribute develops and expands this global message through three autonomous yet closely interconnected nuclei in which memory, transformation and contemporary rituality are constantly interwoven.
The exhibition space is a single narrative and emotional device in which the three experiences become three forms of US – the central theme of Green&Blue 2026 – accompanying visitors on a journey through a dual autobiography.
At its heart, the Carousel of Time is a circular timeline that intertwines the artist’s biography with that of the work. Around this device, past, present and future do not proceed in a straight line, but come together again: fragments, images, objects and traces reconstruct the transition from breathlessness to breath, from mourning to transformation, from personal memory to a new way of inhabiting the world, whilst “the red of blood turns to pink”:
the colour of the work and the colour the artist chooses for mourning.
On either side, two new Respiri are being staged in an exclusive preview for Green&Blu2026. Urban, compact and easily transportable, pneumOS_XS is the new version of pneumOS.
For the occasion, the cybernetic lung will breathe in real time to the rhythm of the city of Milan, animated by ARPA Lombardia’s open environmental data. Designed as a design object, halfway between a home lamp and a smart public lighting and sound system, pneumOS XS is a datapoietic* cyborg: a ‘machine for feeling and empathy’ whose role in the ecosystem is to transform invisible information into tangible, shared experiences for human beings.
Mirroring the work, pneumOS Senbazuru reworks the ancient Japanese practice of the garland of a thousand origami cranes, meant to wish for good fortune and healing, transforming it into a secular ritual dedicated to the planet’s breath. Through a minimal, repeated gesture (folding, sewing, leaving a trace), the public contributes to the construction of a collective work, dedicated to the well-being and breath of the planet.
The Milan exhibition brings together various forms and manifestations of the “WE”, which is celebrated threefold: the WE of the city’s breath, through the encounter with the non-human in pneumOS_XS; the collective, ritual and participatory WE of pneumOS Senbazuru, which is created and composed together; the intimate and shared WE of Giostra del Tempo, where the artist, the works and the public meet, offer themselves and engage in dialogue within the same space of vulnerability and connection.
Respiro)(Tribute is a gesture. Oriana Persico’s “first public message”, following the silence of mourning, is not merely announced but embodied within the exhibition. In the public and private, individual and collective space of autobiography,the many and varied silences, hopes and moments of breathlessness experienced by visitors – each with their own lived experience – come together, celebrating the possibility of “getting through the crisis and breathing again” together.
“Salvatore’s death was my Hiroshima. Existing without him, my symbiont, was impossible, unacceptable. Wrong. And yet here I am. With my body amputated, I live, I breathe. I love again.
It is not easy to be reborn; it hurts. Even loving hurts. But it is possible.
In this circular time that brings together events, things and people – present, past and future – after almost four years I am writing again to share a tangible, concrete experience.
Getting through the crisis and breathing again.
If I think about it. If I look back. My true tribute to Sal – what he always wanted, believed, hoped for – is that I would continue to breathe. That I would manage to survive without him.”
(Oriana Persico. Breath)(Tribute)
Oriana Persico. Respiro)(Tribute, National Museum of Science and Technology “Leonardo da Vinci”, Via Olona, 4, Milan
04 – 06.06.2026 (free entrance)
images: (cover 1-3-5-6) Oriana Persico, PneumOS (2) Oriana Persico, RESPIRO Tribute (4) Oriana Persico, Obiettivo 6. Primo Ritual 2
*DATAPOIESI: concept and works in brief
Datapoetics is the artistic practice that combines data and poiesis. The term “Datapoiesi” was coined by Oriana Persico and Salvatore Iaconesi in 2018 to describe a new phase of their artistic project, and refers to the ability of data to create something that did not previously exist, making us sensitive to the complex phenomena of the environment.
Through the datapoietic approach, data and computation move beyond the exclusive realm of technology to embrace that of sensitivity, meaning, relationship and culture. An aesthetic (and an ethic) of relationship emerges, in which the artwork is a “totem of knowledge”: a device designed to help us learn to gather around data, devise new social roles and rituals, and reconnect with our senses, generating meaning together.
The first datapoietic work is OBIETTIVO (2019): the lamp, animated by data on global poverty in 2020, enters the Farnesina Collection and the ADI Index, competing for the Compasso d’Oro. The second, Udatinos (2021), was created in Palermo at the Mare Memoria Viva Urban Ecomuseum and subsequently in Verona (2025): the work is an artificial plant that gives voice to the wellbeing of water. pneumOS, “the cybernetic organ” that breathes with the city, will debut in Milan with Green&Blue 2026 following Expo Osaka 2025.
