PAV – Parco d'Arte Vivente in Turin will open "Piero Gilardi — Dall'arte alla vita" (From Art to Life) on Friday, October 30, 2026, at 6 p.m. The exhibition is curated by Marco Scotini.
The show focuses on a turning point in Gilardi's work, when he gave up making objects altogether. Rejecting the idea of the artwork as a commodity, he turned instead to direct social engagement through theatrical animation.
The story begins in Turin in the early 1970s, with workshops that Gilardi ran in several settings, including psychiatric institutions. There he tested a very different role for art, introducing theatre, masks and group play into closed institutions and, in PAV's account, giving patients back a body, a voice and a place in public life.
Gilardi continued this approach over the following decades and adapted it to other communities. The workshop, whether held in a hospital, on the street, in a neighbourhood or in a town square, became his lasting place of work. In it, art served people, based on his belief that it could make real changes to their lives and contribute to transforming society.
Out of this practice, Gilardi developed the theoretical idea of an aesthetic community that prefigures a political one. From the late 1980s, the idea took a new shape in large street parades featuring masks, giant heads and grotesque figures, in which the imagery of Piedmontese carnival met the visual language of anti-nuclear and anti-globalisation protest.
The exhibition is supported by Compagnia di San Paolo, Fondazione CRT and Regione Piemonte. PAV, an experimental centre for contemporary art on via Giordano Bruno, is open to the public on Fridays from 3 to 6 p.m. and on Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with visits for schools and groups by booking from Tuesday to Friday.
Until October 18, the centre is showing "Metamagico," an exhibition of Claudio Costa, also curated by Scotini.
