Spazio all'Arte

Spazio all'Arte was born in 2012 alongside the coworking itself, out of an idea shaped by two people: Michelangelo Pavia, an architect, and Giusi Affronti, an art historian. Together they set out to build a programme of exhibitions open to new voices in the Sicilian art scene — deliberately kept free from the commercial logic of the cultural industry from day one.

The principle behind it is simple to state and radical to practise: experiment with ways of showing art beyond the "white box" of museums and galleries, bringing it into public, everyday spaces instead. We call it "arte ab.itata" — inhabited art — art on a human scale, lived inside the daily routine of work and in places people simply pass through, able to reach both a deliberate audience and "involuntary visitors": someone walking into the coworking for a meeting who ends up, without looking for it, in front of a site-specific installation.

The goal, stated from the start, is to turn the experience of art "from the studied indulgence of an elite into a widespread, everyday habit" — training the eye of the people who work here every day, without ever asking them to leave their own space to do it. The coworking itself becomes as much a protagonist of the project as the artworks: an open space where professionals work surrounded by paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations designed for that specific wall, that light, that walkway.

The first season, in 2012, opened with "Antico" by Mariano Brusca and ran through ten shows across the year — including "Agiografie" by Igor Scalisi Palminteri, "Human" by Giacomo Rizzo (also shown at Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri), "Il libro unico" by canecapovolto and Zoltan Fazekas — closing out with Filippo La Vaccara straddling the turn into 2013. The project has never stopped since: from 2012 on we've been running events at our space and across the neighbourhood, all free, averaging about 30 a year.

Over the years Spazio all'Arte has kept moving across different languages. Between 2016 and 2017, "Faccia(ta) di Sicilia," our first photography competition, collected diptychs pairing a portrait with a piece of architecture and grew into a travelling exhibition — from Palermo to the Chiesa di Sant'Eulalia dei Catalani, all the way to Enna and Siracusa. Since 2021, photographer and teacher Dario Guarneri has become a recurring travel companion: his photography courses close every time with a student show, from "La Sicilia come Paesaggio" in 2021 to further exhibitions in 2023 and 2024. In between, the social photography of SICILIA AL LAVORO in 2022, Claudia Villani's FILOCONDUTTORE project in 2023, NOR(MALE)'s reflections on men who hate women with Scuola Fuori Norma and canecapovolto — all the way to expanding beyond the walls of our original coworking. With the opening of Orbita, the Kalsa's Casa della Partecipazione, the project found a second home: it's there that, in May 2026, we hosted Obiettivo Kalsa, Luigi Cocuzza's photography exhibition dedicated to our neighbourhood — the most recent proof that, for us, art stays a way of looking at the place we live in, not an object to be shown somewhere else.

Exhibition archive

List reconstructed by cross-referencing neunoi.it, the 2026 Curriculum Associativo, and neu [nòi]'s public Facebook post archive (2012-2026). Coverage is good across the whole period, except for parts of 2015, 2019 and 2020, where no exhibition references turned up in the sources consulted.

2012

• "Antico" — Mariano Brusca, ceramics and drawings curated by Giusi Affronti — the coworking's opening show
• "Agiografie. Storie mistiche ed eroine alternative" — Igor Scalisi Palminteri
• "Human" — Giacomo Rizzo
• "15" — Gianni Cipriano
• "Human Project" — Giacomo Rizzo (Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri)
• "Il libro unico" — canecapovolto + Zoltan Fazekas
• Solo show — Angelo Sturiale
• Solo show — Alfonso Leto
• Solo show — Toti Garraffa
• Solo show — Filippo La Vaccara

2013

• "Paesaggi Costruiti – straniamento e genius loci" — Mauro Filippi
• "Attratti" — Emilio Greco
• "Vorrei che la mia vita fosse un quadrato..." — Giovanna Marascia and Angelo Sigurella
• "Haut/Haut" — Stefania Artusi

2014

• "NON GUARDARE" — acoustic films and sound pieces, with canecapovolto and arsnova (a sound/performance event)

2015 — no new show of our own; we launched the "Faccia-ta di Sicilia" photography competition

2016

• "Home" — photography show by Giuseppe Mazzola on Palermo's homeless and the idea of home
• "Faccia(ta) di Sicilia" — neu [nòi]'s first photography competition (portrait+architecture diptychs); a travelling exhibition, first in Palermo (Chiesa di Sant'Eulalia dei Catalani / Istituto Cervantes), then in Enna (Torre di Federico II)

2017

• "Faccia(ta) di Sicilia" — stop at the Galleria Civica di Enna, as part of Enna's 8th Book and Reading Festival

2018

• An evening around the work of sculptor and designer Alberto Criscione
• Unveiling of a work by Mariano Brusca at Palermo's Waldensian Church, 7 years after "Antico"

2019-2020 — no new show of our own found (2020 is the year ZERO launched)

2021

• "La Sicilia come Paesaggio" — group photography show curated by Dario Guarneri, with Eleonora Arnone, Giusi Calcaterra, Ivana De Lisi, Mariella Fazone, Simona Galluccio, Alessia Li Vecchi, Roberto Madonia, Giusi Nicolosi

2022

• "Villa Igiea's Workers" — photography by Benedetto Prestifilippo
• Early in the year, we announced a cycle of 5 photography exhibitions dedicated to the theme of work
• "SICILIA AL LAVORO" — competition and photography exhibition; winners Monica Guarneri (best project) and Sabina Carnemolla (best single photo), with Carmen Caracausi, Lorella Aiosa and other selected entrants

2023

• "EX POST / EX ANTE" — solo show by Claudia Villani, a stop on the travelling FILOCONDUTTORE project (16 artists, 16 stops)
• Student show from Dario Guarneri's Photographic Storytelling course — Federica D'Amico, Roberta Di Stefano, Simona Ferruggia, Carlo Graziano, Salvatore Maniscalco, Giuliana Sala, Chiara Zanghì
• "NOR(MALE) — men who hate women" — Scuola Fuori Norma + canecapovolto

2024

• Photography show by students of Dario Guarneri's Photographic Storytelling course
• "Abbiamo tutto, manca il resto" — interactive installation on Sicilian stereotypes, at Farm Cultural Park (Favara, AG)
• "Visioni di Santa Rosalia. Da neu [nòi]: sacro, popolare, pop" — group show with 13 Sicilian artists, curated by Marco Rizzo, for the Festino's 400th anniversary

2025

• "Anche le immagini ci guardano" — canecapovolto + Scuola Fuori Norma
• "NOI" — performance art curated by Meltem Yakın Üldes, performer Ivana Balistreri, with l'Arte Di Crescere, Cesvop and CIRPE (#AbitiRiBelli project)
• "LUCE" — Domenico Pellegrino, a gold-leaf and crochet dress-artwork, same group

2026

• "Obiettivo Kalsa" — photography exhibition by Luigi Cocuzza, hosted at Orbita