The interior of the church, designed by Giovanni Muzio in 1932, will be the stage for a unique creative dialogue between the music of Tashi Wada and the site-specific intervention Untitled (1997) by Dan Flavin (USA, 1933 – 1996). Fondazione Prada produced Flavin's work in collaboration with the Dia Center for the Arts in New York and the Dan Flavin Estate on the occasion of his first Italian solo exhibition organized in Milan by the Prada Foundation, which has since then supervised and supported the conservation of the work. The green, blue, pink, gold and ultraviolet lighting produced by fluorescent tubes crosses the nave, transept and apse of the church, creating a chromatic succession that suggests the natural progression of light "night-dawn-day", attributing to the artist a metaphysical dimension of the work.
What Is Not Strange? is Tashi Wada's most extensive and passionate musical work performed live with his partner Julia Holter. To produce this album, the composer drew inspiration from the writings of American poet Philip Lamantia. His artistic practice investigates the effects of resonance and dissonance in music using unconventional instruments, tuning systems and simple sound structures, which provoke unexpected, almost dreamlike emotional states in the listener, which change from one moment to the next.
Born in Los Angeles, Wada has embraced his family's artistic heritage
Son of Fluxus composer Yoshi Wada and artist and gallery owner Marilyn Bogerad, with whom he lived in close contact with figures such as Simone Forti and Nam June Paik. After studying at the California Institute of the Arts with composer James Tenney, in 2017, Wada created the ensemble Tashi Wada Group and recorded his first album, Nue (2018), made in collaboration with his father and published by RVNG Intl. This initiative marks the fourth collaboration between Fondazione Prada and Threes, which, since 2017, has organized a series of musical projects in the Church of Santa Maria Annunciata nella Chiesa Rossa. The concerts have featured diverse forms of sound expression, including: tape loops by William Basinsiki (2017), the church organ performances of Charlemagne Palestine (2018) and Ellen Arkbro (2021), Arvö Part's performance of the iconic Tabula Rasa (2019), Dies Irae, performed by Maria Horn (2022) and a four-voice female choir, and the sonic experimentation of FUJITA (2023), and Marta De Pascalis (2024).
