Time Capsules in Glass: Maria Grazia Rosin at Vivienne Westwood, Milan
by Alexandra I. Mas
Like relics from a distant future or emissaries of an ancient, frozen past, Maria Grazia Rosin’s glass sculptures pulse with a strange, speculative vitality. Blown into form with the precision of a master and the intuition of a dreamer, her creations exist at the intersection of science fiction and baroque exuberance — where microscopic mythologies bloom into luminous totems of transformation. With each piece, Rosin explores not only the physicality of glass, but the metaphysical implications of survival, memory, and mutation.
During Milan Design Week 2025, this poetic and peculiar vision finds a home in an equally iconoclastic setting: the Vivienne Westwood boutique on Corso Venezia 25. From April 8 to 13, the space plays host to a curated selection of Rosin’s works, establishing a dialogue between two creative forces known for their radical aesthetics and intellectual irreverence.
This marks a continuation of an ongoing artistic rapport. In 2014, Rosin created Vortex Crystal Orbs, a swirling chandelier of glass and energy unveiled at Fuorisalone and now permanently suspended at the boutique’s entrance. That earlier collaboration set the tone: conceptual, theatrical, and provocative.
ICE ViruX 2009 / 2025 – Viruxilli
At the center of this new exhibition is ICE ViruX, a haunting and crystalline series that imagines the reanimation of prehistoric viruses, long entombed in polar ice and awakened by climate collapse. The Viruxilli, as Rosin calls them, are fictional micro-organisms — alien-seeming yet biologically plausible — rendered in glass with eerie elegance. Drawing inspiration from scientific discoveries and apocalyptic anxieties, Rosin transmutes fear into fascination, tracing invisible vectors of contagion and continuity across geological time.
These objects are neither fully natural nor wholly invented; they belong to a speculative ecology in which origin myths are rewritten through the lens of environmental crisis. They shimmer with contradiction: fragile yet enduring, beautiful yet unsettling.
About the Artist
Born in Cortina d’Ampezzo and based in Venice, Maria Grazia Rosin has long embraced glass as her material of choice, not for its delicacy, but for its infinite elasticity between form and idea. Since her pivotal discovery of the medium during the 1992 Progetto Vetro exhibition at Bevilacqua La Masa, she has pushed its boundaries through multimedia installations and collaborative explorations.
In 2007, Rosin unveiled Gelatine LUX at Palazzo Fortuny, a site-specific project where Murano tradition met digital imagery and ambient sound. This ability to fuse craft with concept earned her the Glass in Venice award in 2015, naming her the year’s leading international glass artist.
A Luminous Intersection
At Vivienne Westwood’s Milan boutique, Rosin’s works inhabit the space. Suspended within the theatrical environment of one of fashion’s most visionary houses, her glass beings become emissaries of another world — or perhaps another mode of perception. The exhibition shows what happens when disciplines collide and dissolve: when design becomes myth, when fashion hosts philosophy, and when glass becomes the medium through which we glimpse both past extinction and future possibility.
