Animalier

The CiCo Art Gallery is pleased to present Animalier, an exhibition of contemporary art dedicated to the representation of the animal world as a symbolic, psychological, and historical mirror of humanity.

The inauguration will take place on **Sunday, February 22, 2026, at 12:00 PM**, at the gallery's location at Via Gallese 8/10/12, Rome. The exhibition will be open until March 8, 2026. “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats animals,” according to Gandhi, while for Pythagoras, as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Thus, **Animalier** explores the deep and complex relationship between humans and animals, investigating how the figure of the animal has traversed the centuries, assuming multiple meanings: totem, divinity, metaphor of the unconscious, embodiment of primal instincts, but also victim, companion, and alter ego of humanity.

In this exhibition project, the animal is not understood as a simple figurative subject but as a conceptual device through which artists interrogate themes such as identity, behavior, collective memory, and the relationship with nature. Through contemporary languages—painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and new forms of expression—the works on display construct a dialogue between historical references and psychological readings.
The exhibition path traverses different eras and imaginaries: from the symbolic animality of ancient and medieval civilizations, through the Renaissance bestiary and the nineteenth-century animalier, to the twentieth-century interpretations related to psychoanalysis. In this context, the animal emerges as an archetype, a projection of the unconscious, and a key to understanding the present.

The artists featured in the exhibition include: **Bacci, Bolognesi, Colella, Cotellessa, Gudenko, Di Stefano, Kostabi, Maresti, Pietrangeli, Procopio, Rapanotti, Ricci Piccirilli, Sacchetti, and Ulisse.** The works evoke universal themes such as instinct, fear, desire, freedom, and transformation, challenging the boundary between human and non-human. In an era marked by ecological crises and profound ethical redefinitions, Animalier invites the audience to reflect on the role of the animal in the construction of cultural imaginaries and on humanity’s responsibility towards other forms of life.

As Cotellessa emphasizes in a curatorial statement: Animalier arises from the need to restore to the animal its original symbolic function: not an object of representation, but an active presence, a mirror of our impulses, our fears, and our collective memory. In these works, the animal observes us, questions us, and sometimes unmasks us."
The exhibition proposes an immersive and reflective journey, capable of connecting the past and the present, art and psychology, history and current affairs, offering the spectator a space for critical and sensitive observation of the ancestral bond that unites humanity to the animal world.
Web: studiocico.it