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
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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