Art that makes the invisible visible: A-Head Project’s new initiative with artist Claudia Virginia Vitari in collaboration with the Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea Raffaella De Chirico.
Rome, June 2025 – From 1 July a new artistic and social project is about to take shape in Rome, thanks to the collaboration between visual artist Claudia Virginia Vitari, A-Head Project of the Angelo Azzurro Onlus association and the Raffaella De Chirico Arte Contemporanea Gallery. The project, which also sees the active involvement of the Gnosis Cooperativa Sociale Onlus residential and semi-residential facilities, is an initiative that puts art at the service of inclusion, participation and awareness around the theme of mental health. Claudia Virginia Vitari, represented by the Raffaella De Chirico Arte Contemporanea gallery, has for years been engaged in artistic research that explores the relationships between the individual and institutions, through multimedia installations that give voice and visibility to individuals and communities often on the margins. Her works, realised by developing her research in contexts such as prisons, psychiatric hospitals, centres for asylum seekers and self-managed radio collectives, are based on a participatory and multidisciplinary approach, in which critical theory, direct testimony and artistic practice are deeply intertwined.
The project for A-Head will be divided into three phases:
1. Artistic residence in Rome: drawing, painting and silkscreen printing workshops to foster dialogue and mutual understanding between the artist and the young people of Gnosis Cooperativa Sociale Onlus thanks to the support of Dr. Laura Di Felice and Dr. Bruno Pinkus. It will take place during a period of immersion in the life of the community, with the aim of collecting testimonies, making portraits and building an authentic relationship with the participants, patients and operators. (June-July 2025 and beginning 2026)
2. Production of the works: the collected experiences will take shape in a series of installations made of glass, rice paper and iron. These materials, chosen for their transparency and layering, become visual tools to tell individual and collective stories, offering glimpses into often invisible identities. The artist will use the silk-screen printing technique to imprint texts, drawings and portraits on translucent surfaces, creating works that do not impose a single narrative but open up to multiple interpretations, with absolute respect for the people involved.
3. Final exhibition in Rome: the project will culminate with an exhibition in the capital, where the new works will be put in dialogue with some modules of the ‘Invisible Cities’ cycle, already exhibited in Barcelona and Turin. The exhibition will offer a comparison between different experiences, but united by reflection on the concepts of marginality, institutionalisation and self-determination. It will be an opportunity to bring the public closer to an alternative representation of mental health, based on relationships, listening and the dignity of lived experience.
“My aim is not to document suffering, but to create a chorus of voices that can broaden the viewer’s awareness, restoring visibility and humanity to those who live situations
often stigmatised,’ says Claudia Virginia Vitari. “Art can be a space in which judgement is suspended and the ground is opened for a deeper understanding of the society in which we live”.
The project, which will also be realised thanks to the logistical and organisational support of the Angelo Azzurro Onlus association A-Head, is part of a broader process of reflection and cultural activation on the theme of mental health.
cultural activation on the theme of mental health.
The A-HEAD project was born in 2017 at the behest of the Calapai family to fight the stigma of mental disorders and from the collaboration between the Associazione Angelo Azzurro ONLUS and artists and DJs of international standing. In fact, with the A-HEAD project, Angelo Azzurro, curated by Piero Gagliardi from 2017 to 2022, aims to develop a path of knowledge of mental illness through art, actively supporting contemporary art and the artists who collaborate in the various workshops that the association has been holding for years alongside the more traditional psychotherapy activities. Given
the charitable nature of the project, with A- HEAD culture, in the broadest sense of the term, becomes a health-generating engine, insofar as the proceeds are donated to the rehabilitation projects of the non-profit organisation Angelo Azzurro, linked to creativity, understood as a purely human characteristic, fundamental for the development of a healthy interiority. The overall aim of the project is to help young people who have gone through a difficult period to fully reintegrate into society, through the development of new working and creative skills.
Claudia Virginia Vitari – Biography
Born in Turin, Italy. She graduated in 2004 in Halle an der Saale (Germany), at the University of Art and Design ‘Burg Giebichenstein’, where she specialised in Painting and Graphics under the direction of Prof. Ulrich Reimkasten. Subsequently, she attended various workshops on glass processing methods at Bild- Werk Frau- enau and Berlin Glass (Germany), Fundació Centre del Vidre (Spain), S12 Galleri Og Verksted (Norway) and Pilchuck Glass School (USA) – with a scholarship from the Alexander Tutsek Foundation. His work focuses on the study of the relationship between the individual and society and, in particular, his projects are based on the artistic analysis of total institutions, through graphic documentation that contrasts different personal histories with the analysis of institutions. Percorsogalera (2008-2009) was realised in Turin in collaboration with the Lorusso and Cutugno prison. Le Città Invisibili (2010-2013), on the other hand, was created in Barcelona in collaboration with the Cultural Association Radio Nikosia, the first Spanish radio station organised by people diagnosed with mental illness. Both projects were supported by the regional government of Piedmont (Italy). Vitari has been working in Berlin since 2014, investigating through her artistic documentation the current issue of migration in Europe (Interstitial Identities) and has been represented by the Raffaella De Chirico Arte Contemporanea gallery in Milan since 2012. She currently lives and works between Turin and Berlin.
Raffaella De Chirico – Biography
Born in Turin in 1973, she graduated from the Liceo Linguistico and then continued her studies at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, Foreign Languages and Literature course in Turin, deepening her studies in Spanish and Hispano-American Literature, with a thesis on Mario Vergas Llosa. After graduating, she continued with a Master’s degree at IULM in Milan in Economics of Cultural Heritage. After some work experience including teaching Italian language in the United States and project management for a sponsor at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, she worked as an assistant at the Mazzoleni gallery in Turin and in 2011 opened her own exhibition space in Turin. In 2021 he also opened a gallery in Milan, which will become the only venue in December 2023, in Brera.
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