Torino Artscape is Artissima’s column highlighting current exhibitions in the city’s leading contemporary art institutions: a regular feature offering a glimpse into the most compelling exhibition programs, curatorial visions, and artistic expressions that animate Turin’s contemporary art scene. Torino Artscape invites you to explore Turin as an essential destination for art lovers, offering inspiration and cultural enrichment throughout the year.
This new episode is dedicated to Archivorum.
Archivorum
Archivorum is an international platform dedicated to the preservation, activation, and transmission of artists’ archives through research, publishing, and education.
Founded in Luxembourg by Mia Rigo, the project is built on a clear idea: the archive is not a static container of the past, but a living structure capable of evolving alongside artistic practices and of keeping the dialogue between memory, the present, and the future open. The name itself refers to the Latin archivum and embodies a dual tension, between preservation and movement, between protection and sharing.
At the heart of this vision is also a personal story: growing up in Modena in an environment shaped by books and libraries, Mia Rigo turned into a project a reflection sparked by Oriol’s poem on the “despair of the collector,” the pain of seeing what one has loved disperse. From that insight came the desire to safeguard artistic legacies not only through artworks, but above all through artists’ own words, books, and testimonies, so that their voices can remain an active part of the making of memory. Archivorum thus imagines an open and dynamic archive, one that does not freeze narratives in place but connects them, making them accessible and meaningful to new generations of scholars, artists, and visitors.
One of its most important spaces is Archivorum Library, housed within the architectural complex of the historic Franco Noero Gallery in Turin and open from Tuesday to Saturday. With more than 6,000 volumes dedicated to contemporary art and independent publishing, the library is a unique research and consultation space, frequented by students, researchers, and enthusiasts interested in exhibition catalogues, artists’ books, and experimental publications. It is also the only library in Turin entirely devoted to contemporary art and preserves complete collections from independent publishers, offering a valuable overview of editorial production in recent years.
Alongside its role in conservation, Archivorum also develops significant publishing work through Archivorum x M, the imprint through which 25 artists’ books have been co-published with independent publishers such as Nero Editions, Koenig Books, and Mousse Publishing.
The library also hosts presentations, talks, and workshops, reinforcing an understanding of the archive as a place of exchange, study, and participation. In this perspective, Archivorum does not simply preserve the past, but continuously activates it, turning it into a tool capable of generating new interpretations, new connections, and new forms of the future.
