CODICE VISIVO 2026
The Journey – Beyond the Map
On 17 October 2026 at 5.00 pm, the second edition of Codice Visivo, an event dedicated to author photography, will be inaugurated at the Sotto Sopra Art Studio Gallery, in the heart of Rome, in the San Giovanni area.
Conceived and directed by Curator Monica Bisin, the exhibition event will take place from 17 to 24 October 2026 and is part of the Rome Art Week Circuit, the prestigious annual event spread throughout the city of Rome and dedicated to contemporary art.
What is Codice Visivo?
After the first edition, dedicated to experimental photography and the plurality of contemporary languages, Codice Visivo continues its research through a new exploration: that of the journey.
The Journey – Beyond the Map
A journey not understood only as movement through space, but as an experience capable of changing the way we look at what we encounter. A crossing of places, cultures, memories and perceptions, in which photography becomes a tool for capturing what normally escapes us: a wait, a transformation, a trace, a presence, a sensation.
Four authors, four profoundly different paths, brought together in a single space to tell four different possibilities of the photographic journey. Because travelling also means learning to see differently. Going beyond the already known image of a place, crossing what appears in order to arrive at what can be intuited, transforming the experience into a personal form of storytelling.
Photography can tell the story of a destination, but it can also move away from it: it can transform it, distort it, suspend it, return it through memory or through an individual sensibility.
The authors exhibiting are Sandro Lombardo, Riccardo Zappelli, Girolamo Mingione and Elisabetta Nottola.
Let us get to know them one by one…
Sandro Lombardo
Passionate about photography and always interested in the relationship between image, culture and perception, Sandro brings to Codice Visivo: “The Shapes of Time”, a project dedicated to Japan, built around two fundamental concepts of Japanese culture: Ma and Mujō. Ma is the space of pause, of the interval, of waiting: what exists between one thing and another, between a before and an after.
Mujō, on the other hand, refers to the transient nature of things, to the awareness that nothing remains unchanged and that every form is crossed by time and transformation.
In Lombardo’s photographs these concepts do not remain abstract, but take shape in space, in the voids, in the presences and in the suspensions of the image.
Japan thus becomes much more than a geographical destination: it is the place in which the photographer encounters a different idea of time and space.
A journey that also proceeds through what does not happen, what stops for an instant and what, precisely while it is being observed, is already changing.
Riccardo Zappelli
Riccardo crosses “Venezia” starting from a profoundly personal relationship with the city and from a reflection on its image, now consumed by tourist representation.
Venice has long been a city narrated, photographed, reproduced and transformed into a spectacle, into an image, into a commodity. Its beauty thus also risks becoming an image already possessed even before it is looked at.
In his work, the reference to the famous “Venezia” by Francesco Guccini introduces a further dimension, made of memory, disillusionment and distance.
His photographic language, close to painting, intervenes on reality through multiple exposures, light and colour, until transforming the real datum into a personal vision, almost painted.
The journey thus becomes a way of telling Venice beyond its best-known image: not by seeking a different city, but a different gaze upon the city.
Girolamo Mingione
In “La forma del viaggio”, Girolamo starts from different places to arrive at a simple and at the same time essential consideration: places change, the gaze does not change. Rome, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Warsaw become stages of a journey in which the city is not told through what immediately identifies it, but through fragments, geometries, lines, surfaces, cuts and unexpected perspectives.
Architecture is observed as visual matter and transformed into composition. Graphic quality, minimalism and the search for essential forms allow Girolamo to remove the place from its immediate recognisability, in order to return it as an experience of the gaze.
The journey thus becomes a discovery of forms that return, change and dialogue with one another across distant cities.
It is not geographical distance that defines the journey, but the ability to recognise, while passing through different places, one’s own grammar of seeing.
Elisabetta Nottola
With “Shamma”, Elisabetta directs her gaze towards the Ethiopian highlands, following the human, cultural and spiritual meaning of the shamma, the traditional white shawl that accompanies the life of local communities. The journey enters the heart of a culture through its rituals and its everyday life.
In Lalibela, during the celebrations of Genna and Fasika, the figures emerge from the half-light of the vigils, crossed by the light of candles with an almost Caravaggesque intensity. Then the narrative opens onto the markets, work, teff, the earth, reaching that suspended dust that seems to transform the dust into a constellation.
Elisabetta’s photography thus proceeds from night to light, from spirituality to everyday life, from the ritual dimension to the communal one.
Shamma is not only the story of a distant place, but a profoundly emotional story, in which black and white becomes a precise choice: to eliminate distractions and allow what the author feels in her relationship with the people and with the reality she encounters to emerge.
Codice Visivo and its Partners
Codice Visivo is pleased to share this experience with its Partners.
Fiaf – Federazione Italiana delle Associazioni Fotografiche, which for many years has been promoting and supporting amateur photography throughout the country, also officially recognises this second edition.
Codice Visivo is also part of the Rome Art Week circuit, the annual event dedicated to contemporary art which, through an articulated programme of exhibitions, events, projects and initiatives, involves galleries, institutions, artists and cultural organisations distributed throughout the city of Rome. RAW represents a platform of great resonance and visibility, widely known in the contemporary art scene and capable of connecting the various artistic realities active in the capital.
The collaboration with L’ArteCheMiPiace is also confirmed, a blog dedicated to art and culture, conceived and directed by artist Giuseppina Irene Groccia, which offers insights into visual art, cinema and literature and gives voice, through interviews and documentation, to numerous contemporary artists and projects.
In dialogue with the theme of the journey, Giuseppina Irene Groccia will also offer a tribute to the event and its theme, exhibiting six works from her project: UrbanBlur.
The collaboration with Arte 24, the television format at the service of culture which for years has given voice and prominence to numerous events in public and private locations, also continues.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue dedicated to the four authors and by an articulated communication and promotional project.
Free entry
All information about the event is available on the official website:
Codice Visivo 2026
The Journey – Beyond the Map
17–24 October 2026
Vernissage: 17 October 2026
Sotto Sopra Art Studio – Rome San Giovanni
Curated by Monica Bisin / Fag Arti Visive
Post
Story
Whatsapp