The 24th Triennale Milano International Exhibition is taking place from 13 May to 9 November 2025. With the title "Inequalities", it is conceived as an important forum for reflecting on tendencies and contradictions of the present and on the urgency of the challenges currently facing our planet. It is a space for open, multilateral debate and interaction, in which a variety of disciplines, experiences, cultures and perspectives all come together. It comprises different exhibitions and special projects all over the Triennale building, offering a huge variety of points of view and opening up to interdisciplinary perspectives.

The 24th International Exhibition is curated by Triennale Milano, with President Stefano Boeri in the role of Commissioner-General, and it is supported by the academic research and collaboration with 5 Milanese universities – Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Università Bocconi, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Politecnico di Milano, and the Università degli Studi di Milano – and with more than 20 international institutions–including the Arctic Center, the Democracy and Culture Foundation, Columbia University, the Norman Foster Foundation, Oficina del Historiador, Princeton University, and Serpentine.

The 24th International Exhibition presents a carefully orchestrated structure of 8 exhibitions and 10 special projects. Inequalities involves 28 curators and 341 authors from 73 countries, for a total of 7,500 square meters of exhibitions.

The exhibition includes a series of international participations, called for under the auspices of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) through official government channels, that builds a global map of the most emblematic cities of the world on the theme of inequalities. The 24th International Exhibition is organised by Triennale Milano under the aegis of the BIE and is promoted in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, with the support of institutional members of Fondazione La Triennale di Milano: the Italian Ministry of Culture, Lombardy Region, the Municipality of Milan, and the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce of Milan, Monza, Brianza and Lodi.

The Body Blow was developed through long-term collaboration with those with lived experience of asbestos cancers, London Asbestos Support Awareness Group (LASAG), social workers, end-of-life carers, asbestos removal experts, campaigners, and medical and legal professionals. Focused on ideas of ‘acceptable bodily risk’, the film considers what risk means in the context of care, work and our health.

Due to the presence of the docks and heavy industries in Barking and Dagenham, the borough has the highest level of asbestos cancers and mesothelioma in London. The project took place during the Covid19 pandemic; due to the vulnerability of those involved many of the discussions have happened on the phone. Through collage and montage, the film responds to the earlier experimental methods MacColl and Seeger developed for The Body Blow (1962), from which this project takes its name. Asbestos is considered a historical concern, but it has very present and devastating effects on people’s lives today. Asbestos fibres can lie dormant in victims’ lungs for 20- 50 years health issues usually appearing long after retirement.

The film navigates the layers of legal and bureaucratic paperwork those exposed to asbestos are stuck between. Work Capability Assessments, litigation and legal statistical measurements have become controls by which the individual can be mediated, chained to notions of usefulness, framed by the value of their economic and domestic labour. A collaborative script made during a series of workshops asks us to think about the way that we navigate the language which permeates the legacy of asbestos. Who is allowed to be exposed to risk and how is risk quantified?

The Body Blow was recently exhibited as part of ‘Radio Ballads’ at Serpentine Gallery, London which was one of four new commissions with Sonia Boyce, Helen Cammock and Rory Pilgrim. Radio Ballads takes its name from a revolutionary series of eight radio plays by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger broadcast on the BBC between 1957-64.

Radio Ballads is commissioned by Serpentine Civic in partnership with New Town Culture, a Cultural Impact Award-winning project, part of London Borough of Culture, a Mayor of London initiative.

The Body Blow is in remembrance of Robert Kett, Gladys Goodman, Vicky Kaye, Joseph Terrell, Fred Laws, David Thompson

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/39414