APERTO ITALIA

Milan, April 14, 2026. Italy fails to qualify for the FIFA World Cup, and the 2026 Biennale Arte records the lowest number of Italian artists in over 120 years. What’s going on? Are we at the end of the line? What should we do? Let’s talk about it.

For the first edition of Paris Internationale Milano, the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Special Public Program Partner of the fair, presents Aperto Italia, a day of conversations conceived by Massimiliano Gioni to reflect on the state of Italian contemporary art.

Through its collaboration with Paris Internationale, more than twenty years on, the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi returns with a genuine incursion into the context of an art fair, reviving a format it first explored in the early 2000s. With Aperto Italia, the Foundation inaugurates the public program of this Milan edition, turning the opening day into a space for exchange and reflection—a platform for conversation rather than a traditional exhibition.

Aperto Italia reactivates, already in its title, the legacy of Aperto, the historic section of the Venice Biennale devoted to emerging artists, rethinking it today as a critical tool for engaging with the present, while also paying tribute to Giancarlo Politi and his presentations of Italian art on the pages of Flash Art and at the Trevi museum.

At a moment when the absence of Italian artists from the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale has been read as the most visible symptom of a broader fragility—not so much of Italian art itself as of the system that supports, produces, and promotes it—Aperto Italia takes shape as a space for public discussion and exchange.

Over the course of a day structured as a sequence of conversations, artists from different generations and practices are invited not only to present their work, but to question the very conditions of its possibility. What does it mean to be an artist in Italy today? Which institutional, economic, and critical structures support or hinder artistic production? Does it still make sense to speak of “Italian art” as a category?

Artists participating in Aperto Italia include Yuri Ancarani, Simone Berti, Carlo Benvenuto, Ambra Castagnetti, Guglielmo Castelli, Giulia Cenci, Sara Enrico, Chiara Enzo, Linda Fregni Nagler, Elisa Giardina Papa, Iva Lulashi, Marcello Maloberti, Margherita Manzelli, Daniele Milvio, Margherita Moscardini, Adrian Paci, Diego Perrone, Grazia Toderi, Patrick Tuttofuoco, and Grazia Varisco.

The conversations will be moderated in turn by Massimiliano Gioni, Artistic Director, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan; Nicolas Ballario, journalist and independent curator; Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti, Head Curator, Istituto Svizzero (Rome, Milan, Palermo); Gianfranco Maraniello, Director Museo del Novecento, Milan; Marta Papini, independent curator; and Roberta Tenconi, Curator at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan.

With Aperto Italia, the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi continues its work of supporting and promoting the most original expressions of contemporary art, contributing to public debate through projects that bring together artists, institutions, and communities in unconventional contexts, in continuity with the collaborations it has developed over the years with leading platforms in contemporary art.

 

Paris Internationale was born in the summer of 2015 from the initiative of a group of gallerists who shared the desire to imagine a different kind of contemporary art fair: independent, intimate, demanding, and rooted in a collective vision. Its name and identity draw from Guy Debord’s Situationist Internationale, embracing principles of self-management, drifting, hijacking, and emancipation as tools for rethinking the formats and economies of art fairs. Created by and for galleries, in a spirit of inde-pendence and collegiality, Paris Internationale was conceived as a multi-generational platform offering more advantageous conditions than traditional fairs, thus encouraging bolder artistic propositions. From its inception, the project has positioned itself outside dominant, standardized models, privileging experimenta-tion, dialogue, and attention to artists’ needs.

A decade later, Paris Internationale remains an independent, not-for-profit organization, faithful to its founding principles while having established itself as a key moment in the inter-national art calendar.Today, with its first international edition in Milan, Paris Internationale extends this collec-tive and nomadic spirit beyond Paris, reaffir-ming its vocation as a platform shaped by galleries, artists, and local contexts rather than by a fixed geography.

 

 

PROGRAM

 

11:30 am – 12:40 pm
PROGRAMMED ART
Conversation between Patrick Tuttofuoco and Grazia Varisco, moderated by Massimiliano Gioni

A dialogue across generations on the relationship between art, project, and system, tracing the legacy of Arte Programmata while exploring the possibility of conceiving the artwork today as an open, dynamic, and relational device.

 

12:40 pm – 1:50 pm
METAMORPHOSES
Conversation between Ambra Castagnetti, Giulia Cenci, and Diego Perrone, moderated by Marta Papini

Transformation, hybridity, and the instability of forms are at the center of a discussion that moves across matter, imagery, and process, addressing change as a structural condition of the present.

 

1:50 pm – 3:00 pm
TRUTH
Conversation between Yuri Ancarani, Linda Fregni Nagler, and Elisa Giardina Papa, moderated by Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti

An investigation into forms of representation and the dispositifs that construct reality—between image, document, and fiction—in an attempt to redefine the very notion of truth today.

 

3:00 pm – 4:10 pm
GEOGRAPHIES OF THE GAZE
Conversation between Marcello Maloberti, Adrian Paci, and Grazia Toderi, moderated by Gianfranco Maraniello

Artistic practices that traverse places, identities, and belongings, questioning the geographic and symbolic boundaries of the gaze from both personal and collective perspectives.

 

4:10 pm – 5:20 pm
THE SKIN
Conversation between Sara Enrico, Chiara Enzo, and Margherita Manzelli, moderated by Roberta Tenconi

The surface as threshold and site of tension: body, matter, and image converge in a reflection on the skin as a space of inscription, protection, and transformation.

 

5:20 pm – 6:30 pm
MONSTERS
Conversation between Simone Berti, Guglielmo Castelli, and Daniele Milvio, moderated by Nicolas Ballario

Hybrid, marginal, or unsettling figures become tools to question norms, fears, and imaginaries, restoring to the “monstrous” a critical and generative function.

 

6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
THE SYSTEM OF OBJECTS
Conversation between Carlo Benvenuto, Iva Lulashi, and Margherita Moscardini, moderated by Massimiliano Gioni

A reflection on the role of objects and images in the construction of meaning—between memory, consumption, and symbolic stratification—in a continuous shift between the visible and the invisible.