AT CONTEXT 2026: STILL 1492 | Never Ending Story | Fidia Falaschetti X Angelino Artworks
Angelino Artworks presents Still 1492: Never Ending Story, a monumental sculptural totem conceived by Italian artist Fidia Falaschetti and developed in dialogue with Ashley Callingbull, activist and representative of the Cree First Nations.
There is a date that history books set apart, like a threshold: 1492. The modern world, we are told, begins there. Yet every beginning is also an ending, and what some called discovery was, for others, the start of a long erasure. Fidia Falaschetti returns to that threshold and plants a totem on it.
At the origin of the work lies a first chapter, 1492 (2017). Its four stacked blocks answer a question: if the Western world built a totem to honor the things it holds sacred, what would it put on top? Judging by our habits, probably something expensive. Faces distorted by greed and figures caught between body and object carry echoes of Fidia’s earlier sculptures, including Freaky Mouse, Donald F*^k and Egoji. With bright colors and a polished finish, the artist gives our appetite for status symbols and shiny possessions exactly the monument it deserves. The joke works because we recognize the objects. It stings because we still want them.
Years later, the totem grows. Three new blocks, born of conversations with members of Cree communities in Canada, enter the story as a kind of deus ex machina. Their role is to heal the original totem. Where the four blocks of 2017 could speak only of what we buy, own and worship, the new ones make room for what we inherit, care for and pass on. All seven stand together. The old idols are still there, but they no longer have the last word.
The story begins with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and ultimately speaks of Indigenous peoples everywhere. Their histories are distinct, yet many communities still face a question that colonialism was supposed to have left in the past: who gets to decide what happens to their land? This is the force of Still in the title. More than five centuries after 1492, that question remains open.
First shown to the public in Brera during Milan Design Week 2026, the monumental work, realized in collaboration with Angelino Artworks, now comes to Miami. Here, the totem finally stands on Indigenous land in the Americas. For one week, all seven blocks rise together at the entrance to CONTEXT Art Miami, carrying their stories, their humor and their questions to everyone who walks through the gates.
STILL 1492 offers no solution. It leaves the viewer with both the weight and the possibility of an answer: to recognize in that column their own share of history, and to ask whether the story must truly never end.
There is a date that history books set apart, like a threshold: 1492. The modern world, we are told, begins there. Yet every beginning is also an ending, and what some called discovery was, for others, the start of a long erasure. Fidia Falaschetti returns to that threshold and plants a totem on it.
At the origin of the work lies a first chapter, 1492 (2017). Its four stacked blocks answer a question: if the Western world built a totem to honor the things it holds sacred, what would it put on top? Judging by our habits, probably something expensive. Faces distorted by greed and figures caught between body and object carry echoes of Fidia’s earlier sculptures, including Freaky Mouse, Donald F*^k and Egoji. With bright colors and a polished finish, the artist gives our appetite for status symbols and shiny possessions exactly the monument it deserves. The joke works because we recognize the objects. It stings because we still want them.
Years later, the totem grows. Three new blocks, born of conversations with members of Cree communities in Canada, enter the story as a kind of deus ex machina. Their role is to heal the original totem. Where the four blocks of 2017 could speak only of what we buy, own and worship, the new ones make room for what we inherit, care for and pass on. All seven stand together. The old idols are still there, but they no longer have the last word.
The story begins with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and ultimately speaks of Indigenous peoples everywhere. Their histories are distinct, yet many communities still face a question that colonialism was supposed to have left in the past: who gets to decide what happens to their land? This is the force of Still in the title. More than five centuries after 1492, that question remains open.
First shown to the public in Brera during Milan Design Week 2026, the monumental work, realized in collaboration with Angelino Artworks, now comes to Miami. Here, the totem finally stands on Indigenous land in the Americas. For one week, all seven blocks rise together at the entrance to CONTEXT Art Miami, carrying their stories, their humor and their questions to everyone who walks through the gates.
STILL 1492 offers no solution. It leaves the viewer with both the weight and the possibility of an answer: to recognize in that column their own share of history, and to ask whether the story must truly never end.