Curated by art historian and critic Sergio Risaliti and the coordinator of Museo del ‘900 Stefania Rispoli, OPEN resides at the very intersection of contemporary artistic practice and academic inquiry. Developed in dialogue with the research of historian Johanna Gautier-Morin, the exhibition explores the often-invisible foundations of economic life through the works of Agnieszka Polska, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Eglė Budvytytė, Elena Mazzi, Leone Contini, and Riccardo Previdi. Unfolding across the historic interior and exterior spaces, the journey invites visitors to reflect on four key concepts: gleaning, exhaustion, irreversibility, and mutation.

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On the occasion of the exhibition, Elena Mazzi presents a series of works developed as part of her ongoing research into the polar silk road, which she has been pursuing since 2018. Her installation transforms the first rooms of Palazzo Buontalenti into a genuine public square: an open space for exchange that, throughout the months the exhibition is open to the public, will host workshops and meetings with the EUI academic community and the citizens of Florence. Mazzi's work thus takes shape as a living, dialogic device — a place where art does not merely illustrate research, but inhabits it, questions it, and transforms it into collective experience.