After nearly two years of silence, one of Rome’s most distinctive cultural platforms is coming back to life. On Thursday, October 1st, 2026, from 5:30 to 9:30 pm, Takeawaygallery will inaugurate its new venue at Via dei Narcisi 21 in Centocelle, the eastern Rome neighborhood that has long balanced tradition and transformation.
That is the spirit behind the reopening, according to the gallery’s founder, photographer Stefano Carsetti Esposito (Rome, 1959), who created Takeawaygallery at the end of 2009 and formalized it as a cultural association in 2012. The new space is conceived not merely as an exhibition venue but as a genuine urban laboratory — a place that speaks to the entire city, and perhaps to many other Italian realities beyond it.
The choice of Centocelle is deliberate. In an increasingly frenetic world, the neighborhood continues to search for equilibrium between past and future, between identity and openness, between resistance and change. It is precisely in this tension that Takeawaygallery has chosen to root its new chapter, programming exhibitions of photography and sculpture while remaining faithful to a vocation documented by its long history: environmental installations and events in both public and private spaces, including in other territories.
The gallery’s name is no accident. Since its very first collective exhibition in December 2009 — a painting, sculpture and photography show with over 130 established and emerging artists in the Celio district — Takeawaygallery has operated “in takeaway mode,” proposing art outside conventional venues and canonical fruition spaces.
Over the years, the association has built an impressive track record: more than one hundred exhibitions in institutional and private spaces, four art films, and a steady stream of events bridging visual art, music and cinema. Its site-specific interventions are particularly notable — from Lulù Nuti’s installation in the Case Romane del Celio to Alberto Timossi’s Fata Morgana, an environmental installation at 2,720 meters on the Col d’Olen lake in Gressoney-La-Trinité, in the Aosta Valley.
Collaboration has always been at the heart of its mission. Takeawaygallery has worked with an extraordinary range of institutions, including Roma Capitale, the Ministry of Culture (MiBACT), the Special Superintendence for the Archaeological Heritage of Rome, Sapienza University of Rome, ATAC, the Jewish Community of Rome, Matera European Capital of Culture 2019, AMACI, and the FAI, among many others. Land Art projects, publications and collaborations with regions across Italy — from Tuscany to Abruzzo, Basilicata to Valle d’Aosta — round out a biography of rare breadth for an independent association.
The inaugural exhibition will feature works by numerous artists from the gallery’s own archive, a roster that reads like a cross-section of Italian and international contemporary photography and art: Claudio Abate, Rino Barillari (the legendary “king of paparazzi”), Irina Ionesco, Baldo Diodato, Dino Ignani, Gerald Bruneau, Elisa Montessori, Andrea Santarlasci, Massimo Scognamiglio, Thalassini Douma, Rodolfo Fiorenza — alongside founder Stefano Carsetti Esposito and many others.
Takeawaygallery’s most recent major project, WIM: WORDS IMAGES MUSIC, embodies its crossover spirit. Conceived as a series of presentations of books, magazines and encounters connected to music, cinema, visual art and night culture, WIM has brought figures like Michael Pergolani, Maurizio Becker and Renato Marengo to venues such as the Caffetteria of Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome — blending editorial culture with live performance in a format that mirrors the gallery’s rejection of rigid disciplinary boundaries.
What distinguishes Takeawaygallery in the Roman landscape is its consistent commitment to community engagement. Its mission has always included collaboration with institutions, local administrations, art critics, citizens and artists — particularly for public projects — and a deliberate focus on young Italian creative talents, giving emerging artists a platform alongside established names.
As the gallery reopens its doors in Centocelle, that mission remains unchanged: to make contemporary art visible and valued, taking it out of conventional spaces and into the life of the city.
Leave a Reply