Wilhelmina Merante + Leyla Riggio is an artist duo based in Milan. After more than a decade of collaboration across various projects and identities (Dafne, BB5000, The Garden), they formalized their joint practice in 2025. Their work spans sculpture, painting, and multimedia, with a consistent focus on the relationship between form, material, and symbolic resonance.

Their practice investigates how matter can embody concepts of collective experience, emotional weight, and spiritual presence. Materials such as metal and wood are approached not only for their physical properties, but as vessels of cultural, historical, and affective significance. Their works often emerge through processes of repetition, tension, and variation producing forms that oscillate between structural clarity and poetic suggestion. Their artistic language is both restrained and evocative, drawing on craft traditions, architectural references, and abstract symbolism. 




info@meranteriggio.com
Instagram


SHELF PAINTINGS
In Shelf Paintings, the shelf is reconfigured as an operative surface, a site where spatial, material, and cognitive conditions converge. It operates as both structure and proposition: a fragment of architecture that articulates a field of resonance between containment and exposure. Within this framework, the distinction between what holds and what is held becomes indeterminate.

Formal elements acquire symbolic density: the shelf, the container, the architectural frame act as instruments of protection and contemplation. Containment is redefined as the materialization of thought as form, a resistance to dispersion through rhythm, proportion, and interval. Care extends beyond the logic of repair, manifesting as a field of tension that traverses and reveals trauma, transforming it into a generative principle and establishing coexistence as a stable condition.

The compositional attitude of the series is fundamentally pictorial. Each work translates the grammar of painting into spatial terms, where rhythm is articulated through repetition, displacement, and the intervals created by absence. The void left by the uncontained object, or by the emphasis on its supporting structure, becomes an active element, a space of reflection and delay. In this sense, the shelf functions as both frame and surface, generating a pictorial condition in which containment itself becomes image. 




Shelf Painting No. 01 – For the Containment of Alchemical Ingredients, 2025 
Black white yellow and red stained limewood 
280 X 161 X 12 cm
Shelf Painting No. 02 – For the Display and Contemplation of Fine White Porcelain (never to serve its functional purpose), 2025 
Natural and black stained limewood 
280 X 161 X 7 cm
Shelf Painting No. 03 – For the Quiet Archive of Paper Seas, 2025 
Black and red stained limewood 
295 X 150 X 12 cm 
Shelf Painting No. 04 – For the Archive of Pharmaceutical Wonders, 2025
Green stained limewood 
280 X 161 X 12 cm
Shelf Painting No. 05 - For the Taxonomy of Vanishing Structures, 2025 
White and brown stained limewood 
260 X 150 X 12 cm
METAL PAINTINGS
Metal Paintings is a series of works developed through a modular system based on a 5x5 cm grid, used to shape images by subtracting from a continuous metallic surface. The compositions emerge as precise traces, defined through shifting proportions and calibrated spacing.

The series draws upon the stark geometry of surgical procedures and the melancholic atmosphere of graveyard poetry, bringing together an austere visual language and a deep sense of personal symbolism. In this synthesis of brutal structure and emotional resonance, the works reflect an enduring pursuit of purity, echoing the clarity of synthetism and the permanence of timeless signs.




Metal painting 5 - A rectified planisphere - Constructed with a 5×5 cm modular grid, 2025 
Aluminum
255 X 135 X 4 cm 
Metal painting 1 - A gated cross - Constructed with a 5×5 cm modular grid, 2025 
Corten steel
135 X 155 X 4 cm 
Metal painting 2 - A red cross - Constructed with a 5×5 cm modular grid, 2025 
Corten steel
115 X 115 X 4 cm 
Metal painting 3 - A medium shot of a skeleton - Constructed with a 5×5 cm modular grid, 2025 
Aluminum
75 X 155 X 4 cm
Metal painting 4 - A rectified ribcage - Constructed with a 5×5 cm modular grid, 2025 
Aluminum
75 X 155 X 4 cm 
RHYTHMIC WOODS
Rhythmic Woods is a collection of wooden sculptures shaped through the repetition of segments, where rhythm acts as a structural and symbolic principle. The forms evoke skeletal frameworks and imagined architectures; systems of balance, resonance, and control.

The main bodies carry the pulse of this abstraction, sustaining a tension between order and vibration. Wood itself becomes the resonating core of the work - its native, percussive quality shaping the sound and presence of each sculpture.




Figure of a gated cross behind 14 iron bars, 2025 
Mahogany and limewood
135 X 10 X H 155 cm
Figure of a ribcage with 50 ribs, 2025 
Mahogany and limewood
63 X 18 X H 190 cm
Figure of an ox head with 2 horns, 2025 
Mahogany and limewood
95 X 15 X H 60 cm
Figure of a tetraktys with 1+2+3+4 elements, 2025 
Mahogany and limewood
98 X 27 X H 84 cm
Figure of an abacus with 40 beads (potentially resembling the mouth of a shark), 2025 
Mahogany and limewood
70 X 11 X H 78,8 cm
Figure of a saw with 34 teeth, 2025 
Mahogany and limewood
98 X 27 X H 84 cm
Figure of a greek cross with 32 rounded teeth, 2025 
Mahogany and limewood
90 X 9 X H 90 cm
Figure of a plus sign with nearly closed ends (potentially resembling a window or a geometrical idol), 2025 
Mahogany and limewood
60 X 9 X H 60 cm
Figure of a rampant bird with 20 feathers, 2025 
Mahogany and limewood
205 X 22,5 X H 75 cm
COMMUNAL TOOLSCommunal Tools introduces a group of sculptural objects imagined for collective use, tools conceived not for the individual, but for a plurality. 
Drawing from the origins of arts and crafts, these altered implements evoke shared effort and mutual dependence.

Reimagined as symbolic instruments of communal fatigue, they transform the notion of labor into a gesture of connection, where the act of struggling together becomes a form of resistance and a way to generate meaning through solidarity.




Fork (Intended for use by 4 people), 2025 
Steel and mahogany wood
280 X 7 X H 220 cm 
Fork (Intended for use by 2 people), 2025 
Steel and mahogany wood
132 X 7 X H 220 cm 
The Anvil // Arguing with you leaves me drained and disoriented; / the middle path disappears entirely, / as if two oxen pulled / the same plow/ each in their own direction, /unable to turn their heads, / unable to see each other. /, 2025 
Steel and brass
168 X 61,7 X H 58,6 cm
Hammer (Intended for use by 2 people), 2025 
Steel and mahogany wood
47,6 X 27 X H 108 cm
SILVER SAINTS

Silver Saints is a deeply intimate celebration of the essence of metal. This research draws inspiration from prophetic figures and their spiritual presence. Their wise, almost human shapes create a sense of familiarity and inspiration.

Each sculpture reveals its unique character through a hexagon that splits into six parts, becoming simultaneously whole and multiple. This geometry reflects the need for an abstract prophetic figure, an imagined silver saint, whose fragmented yet unified form expresses the complexity and layered nature of spiritual wisdom.




SS 1 “My head is a bridge, upon which the sharpest outcomes are borne.”, 2025 
Stainless steel
190 X 9 X H 17 cm 
SS 2 “My body is hollow, that I may fill it with the light my helm is able to catch.”, 2025 
Stainless steel
99 X 33 X H 232 cm 
SS 3 “My presence must remain grounded, lest it be lifted before its time.”, 2025 
Stainless steel
22 X 22 X H 191 cm 
SS 4 “My embrace is so mighty it may conceal my very flesh.”, 2025 
Stainless steel
83 X 23 X H 180 cm 
SS 5 “My lightness may mislead, yet my solid mind rises tall, worthy of regard.”, 2025 
Stainless steel
5 X 5 X H 176 cm 
SS 6 “My width is a surface for all that draws near the ground; I hold their balance through the watch of my eye.”, 2025 
Stainless steel and wood
133 X 21 X H 93 cm