Milan is a nexus where art fairs, exhibitions, projects, and visions converge, creating an intense and sometimes overwhelming artistic landscape. This creative energy, coupled with evident tensions, is captured in Exibart Onpaper 132. Our latest print issue, presented at our stand during miart (April 17-19, 2026), and available in galleries and art spaces across Italy, delves into this pivotal moment. It measures, questions, and explores the perspectives within an increasingly intricate and layered art system.
Milan’s Art Week 2026 features three concurrent art fairs. Paris Internationale, exhibiting outside of Paris for the first time, presents a curated selection balancing emerging and established artists, and diverse generations and styles, as described by Silvia Ammon in an interview with Erica Roccella. miart celebrates its 30th anniversary in the South Wing of Allianz MiCo, with its new edition detailed by Elsa Barbieri. MEGA Art Fair, an alternative format, aims to redefine the fair experience through its temporal, relational, and participatory models, as explained by founder Marta Orsola Sironi in an interview with Andrea Tricarico.
The upcoming Design Week looms on the horizon, an adjacent yet complementary event that further amplifies the density of the city’s calendar. From the Rho fair to the widespread Fuorisalone, encompassing major brands and experimental practices, Marco Petroni’s article guides us through this urban jungle of events.
Exibart Onpaper 132 also shifts focus to the less visible outputs of this system. The second part of the issue addresses the crucial relationship between culture, the public, and sustainability. As spring’s major events approach, the issue of overtourism increasingly impacts cultural venues. Paola Pulvirenti discusses this with Andreina Contessa and Claudio Parisi Presicce. Marco Amore and Matteo Binci analyze evolving museum management models, from crowd control to creating visitor experiences that balance preservation, accessibility, and financial viability.
This discussion broadens to reveal a deeper fracture within the cultural system. Giulia Ronchi, in her editorial, highlights the “energy shock” that is unsettling current certainties. Recommendations to limit travel and reduce consumption clash with a calendar that demands constant presence and high mobility standards. This leads to the inevitable question: what model are we supporting? Cesare Biasini Selvaggi terms this “Extractive Tourism of the Soul,” a concept that captures the system’s duality—producing meaning while risking the accelerated consumption of places and ideas.
Other contributions in this issue explore this critical juncture. Luigi De Felice analyzes the boom in Korean cinema, Simona Isacchini discusses Jan Fabre’s theater, and Federico Poletti identifies a new wave of Italian fashion designers—Cavia, Pecoranera, Florania—who are blending fashion design with sustainability.
The issue is visually introduced by Davide Monteleone’s powerful images, which bring the discourse back to the material reality of extractivism, exploited territories, and fragile geographies. These images serve as a counterpoint, deepening the exploration of these issues. The cover image, by Marco Rubiola, captures a clown, part of an activist collective, confronting police during a protest. This image, from the exhibition *SCARECROW* at Flashback Habitat, encapsulates a form of creative resistance, a symbolic and translated gesture expressing a dramatic political friction.
In the book review section, Marco Petroni examines *Filosofia e critica dell’Antropocene* by Giulio Pennacchio and Alessandro Volpi, adding another layer to the issue’s overarching theme: rethinking the relationship between culture, environment, and the future. The issue concludes with Luciana Berti’s regular column on art and astrology.
You can find Exibart Onpaper 132 at our stand at miart, in art and cultural spaces in Milan, and throughout Italy. It is also available for purchase online, either individually or as part of a subscription.
