Gliacrobati Gallery was born in 2017, as an idea of a group of operators of the non-profit association Fermata d’Autobus. Conceived as an exhibition space looking at the complexities and fragilities of the existing, it aims for an international dialogue between mainstream and non-mainstream contemporary art in order to investigate its precious, porous and jagged border areas.

For this aim, the gallery fosters the research of authors working outside the official art system, independently or in protected places: self-taught artists, outsiders, authors coming from war zones or areas of economic and cultural crisis.

Contemporary art is particularly given voice here as a tool for reflection and countering human rights violations and gender-based violence.

The gallery is directed by Francesco Sena, Artist and art therapist.

Our work also aims to weave threads of reconnection between Art and its function as a healing and investigative tool of the psyche –  not necessarily the end of the creative vocation, but certainly one of its most direct consequences. The projects we carry out investigate the concept of Art in relation to its capacity to sublimate lacerations, intercept fragilities, dig inside emotions, pose questions and activate those processes of vision that the collective imagination tends to conceal under the ordinariness of everyday life; this also means recovering a social dimension of Art and restoring to the Artist his role as inventor of new worlds and creator of bridges between our lived experience and the complex depth of existence.

In addition to its exhibition activities, Gliacrobati Gallery supports an atelier-workshop open to artists and psychiatric patients with dual diagnoses, coordinated by Carola Lorio, photo-art therapist, and Francesco Sena, carried out in collaboration with the therapeutic communities Fermata d’Autobus and Fragole Celesti (see Gliacrobati Collective).

At a time in history when beauty seems to lose ground, replaced by a brutalised everyday life choked by violence, the artistic experience – with its looking inward – can be a tool of resistance and can provide a new key to understanding human relationships.