Morestalgia – Riccardo Benassi

From 1 to 6 November 2026, IBSA Foundation presents Morestalgia, a work by Riccardo Benassi, in Lugano. The work will be on view to the public in the LAC Hall.

Morestalgia

Morestalgia, created by Riccardo Benassi in 2019 with the support of the Italian Council, is an installation built around an LED screen that the human body can pass through.

By moving through it, visitors become aware of their own physical presence and that of others, taking part in a collective sensory experience and becoming part of a situation deliberately created by the artist for this very purpose.
The title derives from a neologism coined by Benassi to describe a painful feeling characteristic of the post-Internet era.

As Riccardo Benassi explains:
“I called ‘morestalgia’ a specific type of nostalgia whose pain resembles that caused by envy more than that of nostalgia itself. It is the perception of a painful absence, which each of us, however, translates for ourselves as a loss, directly associated with other people we admire and the experiences they share online.”

Talk with the Artist

On 3 November at 6:30 pm, Riccardo Benassi will meet the public for a 45-minute talk in the LAC Hall, moderated by curator Chiara Nuzzi. Taking the installation as its starting point, the conversation will extend beyond the work itself.

At the heart of the discussion is “morestalgia”: the feeling of painful nostalgia that the artist associates with the post-Internet era, linked to language and the presence of the body. The talk offers an opportunity to reflect together on the transformations in the way we experience the present, increasingly suspended between physical and virtual dimensions.