When she talks about art, Alessandra Galletta—who usually has a strong, imposing voice—seems to soften, as if entering a mystical space, as if she were reciting a prayer. This happens when she speaks about her visit to Ettore Spalletti’s studio or when she walks along the cuts of Burri’s Cretto in Gibellina. If art is her religion, then these places are, for Alessandra, the destinations of a wondrous pilgrimage still to be fully explored.

Flavia Lo Chiatto was born in Rome into a family that brought her close to art from an early age, before she moved to Turin, where she began working at Artissima, one of the most important contemporary art fairs in the world. Today she heads the VIP Department of miart in Milan, working closely with major collectors and international artists. Yet she retains a special eye for those performative experiences that bring art closer to small Italian towns.

It was French artists who sparked Paola Nicolin’s love for art, which led her to become a curator. From the Provence of the Maeght Foundation, through New York and Venice, Paola has for years been based in Milan, where she teaches at Bocconi University and has collaborated with the city council on numerous cultural initiatives. She is also Artistic Director of XNL Arte in Piacenza, where she continues her commitment to “taking care” of art.

Two women, one artistic world: Goldschmied & Chiari, who met in Rome while part of the same cyber-feminist group and have since travelled their path together. From Rome they moved to Milan and their new studio, passing through the Venice and Malta Biennials. Today they hold a bold desire: for their work to travel into space aboard a probe, becoming part of an immense stellar archive.

Laura Lamonea began with classical studies in art history in Naples; the Museo di Capodimonte remains a special place for her. Her curatorial practice, however, has led her to seek out spaces that are far from exceptional—sometimes even abandoned. As organiser of the Video Sound Art Festival in Milan, she now brings art into places truly inhabited by communities—schools, underground spaces, scientific and sports venues—transforming them into unexpectedly extraordinary places.

Bianca Pucciarelli began exhibiting her work in the 1970s, when women’s art was barely acknowledged. She therefore invented the name Tomaso Binga in order to have a voice, and since then has helped rewrite the ABC of 20th-century Italian art, beginning with her alphabet performed with the body. Her work focuses on writing, which in her practice becomes a living entity—never dying, only continuously evolving.

From an early age, Maria Bassi grew up surrounded by art, beginning with that first exhibition of Duccio di Boninsegna in Siena. It is no coincidence that one of her favourite places is the Centre Pompidou in Paris, in particular the room dedicated to Giuseppe Penone’s Breathing the Shadow. Speaking about her work at Galleria Minini in Brescia, Maria reflects on the value of exchange, where attempts to explain an artwork are often met with a question that overturns everything.

For Coquelicot Mafille, nature is both content and container of art—a place where humans do not interfere, like in primeval forests. Yet as an artist she works in cities, painting in public spaces, aiming to act upon the civic fabric of the places she inhabits. Perhaps this stems from her fascination with artefacts, with everything that past civilisations produced with care and delicacy to improve collective life.

As a lecturer in Contemporary Art History at Sapienza University of Rome, Raffaella Perna has had the privilege of visiting artists’ studios, where art is seen in the making. In particular, photographic studios: a major scholar of feminist photography, she finds it is in these spaces that female identity and the female body have gained a central role in redefining contemporary art.

For Isabella Ducrot, nothing in her life was planned—not becoming an artist, not achieving recognition at ninety, not exhibiting in New York and Dubai, nor becoming a writer. Between the warp and weft of her life, art intervened like a breath, allowing her to transform textiles collected over years of travel into light, tactile, luminous fragments of work.

Is Alice Pasquini’s art ephemeral? If its destiny is to evolve with the city, with passing people and time, then perhaps yes—though “ephemeral” here simply means transitory. Yet her workplaces are walls, more solid and alive than any canvas. Her street art contains all the romance of a city rediscovered, reused, and re-loved—an art that adds stories to existing stories.

Sofia Uslenghi has travelled thousands of kilometres: from Calabria, where she was born, to Vienna where Egon Schiele’s works moved her deeply, and then to Milan where she settled. Yet her most intense journey has taken place within herself, through an inquiry that led her to photography as a means not only to find her artistic language, but also to achieve peace with her body through self-portraiture.

Matilde Cassani, architect, designer and artist, is the protagonist of APTITUDEforthearts’ 2023 installation Quasi Nessuno, at the Principato di Lucedio in the province of Vercelli. In this special episode dedicated to her, she reflects on how places transform to welcome new populations or to host different rituals. This approach is central to her installation in Lucedio, which in absentia pays tribute to the work of the rice field labourers. Her analytical gaze on space is the defining feature of her practice, visible until November.

Miriam Loro Piana, a lawyer specialising in intellectual property law, travels through time from Paris in the 1920s to Klimt’s Vienna, passing through the Sistine Chapel.

Sonia Farsetti, of the eponymous auction house, encounters Ardengo Soffici in Versilia on her journey, then continues between Florence and Paris, with the aim of reaching even Mars through art.

Play is the key driving force for Swiss artist Nadia Berri, which has taken her from Zurich to London, where she lives. Play also guides her choice of places: Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and Black Mountain College, the liberal arts school where John Cage, Theodore Dreiser, and Robert Rauschenberg taught.

Eleonora Milani, editor-in-chief of Flash Art, describes movement as an essential part of her life. It is movement that led her from the archaeological sites of Tarquinia to Rome, and then to the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum in London and Eva Hesse’s work at the National Gallery of Australia.

Neapolitan artist Ilaria Abbiento discovers that water and the sea—ever-present in her work—have been fundamental elements since childhood. Today, islands such as Asinara, Corsica, and Capraia are central to her recent practice.

Art historian Cristina Resti, who has long collaborated with Generali’s Art Department, begins at her grandmother’s kitchen table and moves towards the discovery of house museums, from the Stibbert Museum in Florence to Sir John Soane’s Museum in London.

Collector and lawyer Maria Grazia Longoni takes us from Basel to the Albertina Museum in Vienna, and then to the Gori Collection in Celle (Pistoia), an open-air museum of environmental art.

TikToker Noemi Tarantini travels across Italy from south to north, passing from Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Cittadellarte in Piedmont to the Centre Pompidou in Paris to admire an Yves Klein monochrome.

Artist Silvia Bigi travels through imaginary cities, cloud flights, forests, and prehistoric quarries. Her Artist Map unfolds more through memories and sensations than through physical places.

Collector Nicole Saikalis Bay, founder of WeArtWalks, takes us from Lebanon, where she was born, to Paris and London, then on walks through Engadin, and finally to Milan, where she now manages her collection with her husband.

Gallerist Chiara Tiberio speaks of Ferrara, where she saw the first exhibition that truly moved her, of Rome and New York—cities that shaped her—and of Bologna, where she now runs an important gallery.

Artist Loredana Longo, known for her Explosions series, recounts the journey that led her from her beloved Sicily to Milan, where she now lives and works, passing through Tuscany, Picasso’s Spain, and ancient Greece of the kouroi.