ON OUR RADAR | HAPPENINGS | WORLD OF CABANA
Take an exclusive tour of Cabana's first exhibition, curated by Deborah Needleman during Salone del Mobile 2025. The tastemaking editor and maker invited seven creative minds – Peter Schlesinger, Green River Project and Emily Bode, Dahyeon Yoo, Sophie Coryndon, James Cherry, and Sophie Wilson – to craft original works for Martina Mondadori's childhood home in Milan, using materials from LVMH Métiers d'Art. Read on to tour 'Speak, Memory' at Casa Cabana.
BY TEAM CABANA | HAPPENINGS | 8 APRIL 2025
Artists exhibiting at Speak, Memory 2025: (pictured left to Right): Peter Schlesinger, Sophie Coryndon, Dahyeon Yoo, James Cherry, Benjamin Bloomstein. Not Pictured: Sophie Wilson, Emily Bode & Aaron Aujla © Filippo Pincolini.
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Salone del Mobile is a defining moment in design — a week when Milan becomes the global epicenter of creativity, conversation, and craft. For Cabana, it marks a milestone: our first-ever exhibition, timed to coincide with this singular Milanese event.
With Casa Cabana - Martina Mondadori's fabled Milanese apartment designed by Renzo Mongiardino - as its stage, Speak, Memory, curated by Deborah Needleman, is a living conversation between past and present: an exhibition that reflects Cabana’s deep belief in the emotional and historical depth of interiors.
Deborah Needleman & Martina Mondadori, photographed at Casa Cabana
Deborah Needleman's unique exhibition draws its title from Vladimir Nabokov’s memoir, a meditation on nostalgia and the persistence of memory. Here, memory is not fixed — it is active, layered, and sensorial. Seven contemporary artists and artisans from across the world were invited to respond to this historic space with newly commissioned works using materials from LVMH Métiers d'Art (Cabana's cover partner for the new issue, Cabana N23). Their creations bridge time, material, and tradition.
The Entrance Hall
The exhibition opens with a striking installation of Peter Schlesinger’s ceramics. His hand-built vases stand like sentinels in the hall — sculptural forms glazed in painterly blues, checkered motifs, and gestural strokes. They draw on ancient vessels while defying symmetry, celebrating imperfection, spontaneity, and historical continuity. Their presence sets the tone for the show: bold, tactile, and steeped in memory.
The Corridor
Debaroun’s quietly powerful leather sculptures line the corridor. Created by Dahyeon Yoo using traditional vegetable tanning and hand-stitching techniques, the pieces are informed by Korean craft traditions yet infused with a minimalist, architectural sensibility. They feel ancient and modern, their restrained forms inviting close attention. They speak to touch, process, and time — all essential themes of the exhibition.
The Living Room
The heart of the exhibition is layered with new commissions and old-world atmosphere. Green River Project, in collaboration with Bode, presents debris-printed furniture — a sofa, armchair, and coffee table — where fragments of domestic textiles are captured in wood. The pieces suggest fading memories, stitched into something entirely new.
Above and around them, Sophie Coryndon’s gilded plaster paintings transform botanical forms, insects, and organic matter into glowing, sacred relics. The room hums with contrasts: opulence and restraint, presence and absence, real and remembered.
Illuminating the space are James Cherry’s sculptural lamps — made from stretched fabric over salvaged forms. Their soft glow and modular feel bring intimacy, adding a rhythm of light and shadow that changes as you move through the room.
The Dining Room
Lining one wall of Casa Cabana's striking dining room are Sophie Wilson’s terracotta plates, in harmony with Mongiardino originals. Hand-shaped and decorated with white slip and sgraffito, each plate is unique. Their surface patterns — loosely inspired by traditional Imari designs — carry a folk sensibility, rendered in celadon green, cobalt blue, and deep brown. They feel like artifacts of domestic ritual, stories told in clay.
The Bathroom
In this smallest, most personal space, Debaroun returns with compact leather objects. Placed quietly, they reward slow contemplation — sculptural, utilitarian, and poetic. Their inclusion in the bathroom reminds us that design is not only about grand statements, but also the quiet beauty of everyday gestures.
The Heart of the Home
Throughout the exhibition, Renzo Mongiardino’s layered interiors become both setting and subject. An artists’ works do not merely occupy a space — they activate it. They echo his vision: that interiors should be richly lived-in, theatrical, and full of soul.
The spirit of Speak, Memory will continue to live on through The Atlas of Craftsmanship — Cabana’s digital platform dedicated to preserving the stories, techniques, and knowledge of artisans around the world.
The exceptional objects and pieces of furniture in Cabana's inaugural exhibition, curated by Deborah Needleman, can now be viewed in Milan. All are available for purchase.
Click here to discover all pieces.
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