T2 Portraits is a unique project of its kind, which combines art and emotions, a story for the reopening of Terminal 2, created by Maestro Franz Cerami with the technical support of Service 2 Service + Gnosis Progetti.
Defined as a storytelling project, it tells the Malpensa community, which every day crosses, lives and creates the community of an airport of large numbers. T2 Portraits is a work of public art that depicts a collective journey that becomes emotions of a varied reality. On May 30, 18 portraits of commanders, hostesses, travellers, workers airports, become protagonists with their faces in a large installation permanent on the external walls of Terminal 2: portraits 3 meters by 2 metres, printed on vinyl applied on steel plates. Also, on May 31, the story of this community is projected with a videomapping installation in the Piazzale of Terminal 2; again from May 31, the installation is a guest, in the space Porta di Milano exhibition at Terminal 1. This last projection will include the entire work and also the making off, a new way of making art, to involve and excite, in a place considered passing through but which with this project will become a surprising place.

Franz Cerami, three times “Ambassador of Design” for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, present with his works in the Collection Farnesina, spent a week at Malpensa, with his inseparable video camera, he portrayed, filmed, listened to and photographed, snapshots of people who for pure chance they told their stories through their images.
The work narrates a community, that of the Milan Malpensa airport, that of a complex universe that thanks to the portraits, then painted by Cerami with mixed techniques merge with the thousand places that the artist has portrayed in his career. A game masterful fusion between people and places, a mix of traditional techniques and painting with oil and graphite paints, colors, lights and the movement of expressions
spontaneous faces and bodies, images that cross and are crossed.
The public will be surprised, they will experience the amazement of an unexpected gift arriving at the
Terminal 2 will welcome them with an engaging work, a work for everyone, which will get them up gaze and which will interrupt the thousand thoughts that precede a departure or an arrival.
Franz Cerami, internationally renowned artist, himself a nomad, tells with his own works a possible world made of humanity, light and imagination: ”I lived a week in the Terminal, an original and unusual artist residency, where I have shared with the protagonists of my portraits, a kaleidoscope of feelings, sensations, fears and anxieties, joys and surprises. A total immersion, I have video portrait
130 people and listened to their stories. Painting their faces was a magical moment. I created a fusion of human architecture with urban architecture, landscapes and faces”.