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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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