Known for her flash-lit realism and the warmth of imperfection, Nan Goldin reinvented how we see truth through the lens. Her latest exhibition, ‘This Will Not End Well’, transforms that same urgency into cinema.
In ‘This Will Not End Well’, the American artist Nan Goldin reframes her archive as moving image. The vast halls of Pirelli HangarBicocca become a dark, resonant landscape where eight slide films loop inside soft structures designed with architect Hala Wardé, and original music by composer Mica Levi heightens the sense of immersion.
Goldin’s language was forged in the clubs and apartments of Boston and New York, where she photographed friends, lovers and performers from within the scene rather than at a distance. That proximity shaped a new way of seeing in ‘The Ballad of Sexual Dependency’, a slideshow first shown in bars and cinemas that made sound and sequencing as essential as the images themselves. In Milan, that intuition reaches full scale: the gallery fades, the films breathe, the audience stays with what unfolds.
The selection spans decades and moods. Works like ‘The Other Side’ and ‘Memory Lost’ speak of chosen family and the labour of remembering; newer pieces such as ‘You Never Did Anything Wrong’, ‘Stendhal Syndrome’ and ‘Gaza’ extend her gaze toward animals, art and the urgencies of the present. The rhythm is cinematic yet diaristic, guided by voice, music and the pulse of the edit.
Goldin’s influence crosses photography and fashion by refusing polish in favour of presence. Her flash, her colours and the closeness of her portraits shaped a visual culture that still seeks truth in the unguarded moment. Beyond the museum, she founded P.A.I.N. to confront the opioid crisis, and her journey became the subject of ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’. Presented as a travelling retrospective that has already visited Stockholm, Amsterdam and Berlin, This Will Not End Well is now on view at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan until 15 February 2026. In Milan, everything returns to a simple conviction: to look is to stay with others, to keep their lives alive in time.
–
Follow us on TikTok @veinmagazine
