Francesca Pionati is a critical spatial practitioner, artist and researcher whose work investigates the aesthetic and political entanglements between urban infrastructures and systems of governance, focusing on how spatial configurations mediate forms of access and collective agency. She is interested in localized strategies of resistance and commoning that emerge in response to exclusionary urban policies and institutional violence, especially within the urban and post-disaster geographies of Italy.
Pionati particularly focuses on the informal architectural interventions that emerge within industrial and institutional environments, signalling the possibility of autonomy within regulated systems. These extensions assert alternative logics of use that don’t just diverge from, but sometimes directly counter, the original function of such spaces—to control, regulate, produce, or consume. Recently, Pionati has been exploring the affective politics of such informal architectures, which, by reclaiming autonomous spaces within the regulated environment, alter the notions of intimacy and proximity for the communities that inhabit them.
Since 2020, Pionati has been collaborating with Tommaso Arnaldi. In 2021, they co-founded the curatorial and research platform Iniziative di II together with Nicolò Pellarin and Lisa Andreani, dedicated to exploring how different spatial configurations, whether physical or virtual, mediate forms of belonging, exclusion, and collective agency. From this experience, the collective initiated II Magazine, of which Pionati is editor-in-chief and Arnaldi is Creative Director. II Magazine explores paradoxes and methodologies within contemporary publishing. Issue#0-Performance and Publishing (co-edited with Lisa Andreani) and Issue#1- Unpublishing and Publishing (co-edited with Dalia Maini) were published by the independent publishing house based in Turin, Paint It Black.
Pionati’s practice is closely linked to radical pedagogies, centered around principles of mutual aid and cooperation. In 2022, she joined the Dutch Art Institute (DAI), a nomadic program standing between artistic practice and theoretical research, intending to expand alternative pedagogical methodologies and temporary communities. From 2023 to 2025 Pionati has also been the Artistic and Academic Advisor of the Studio Program of the independent experimental learning program CASTRO based in Rome, where she invited Maya Rodriguez Castro, Joshua Wicke, Catol Teixeira and Veza Maria Fernandez to lead seminars for the fellows.
The works and research by Pionati and Arnaldi have been presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Forma Arts and Media 15 Bermondsey Square, MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Museo MA*GA, Triennale Milano, Rome Gallery of Modern Art, Cassina Project, MATTATOIO, Manifattura Tabacchi Firenze, Fondazione smART, Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, MEGA Milan, SPAZIOMENSA, Artissima Fair, Fondazione Francesco Fabbri per le Arti Contemporanee, Vleeshal and Centrale Fies among others. She has also partaken in the residency programs at Forma Arts and Media with the support of the Italian Institute of Culture of London, PLAYTIME by SPAZIOMENSA, La Quarta Partete by Triennale Milano, Prender-si Cura by MATTATOIO, VISIO – European Programme on Artists' Moving Images by Lo Schermo dell'Arte, and FONDAMENTA by Teatro India. In 2024 Pionati qualified first for the Lazio Contemporaneo Open Call, , while in 2022 she won Premio Francesco Fabbri per le Arti Contemporanee and Premio Nazionale Arti Visive Città di Gallarate with Tommaso Arnaldi. In 2024 Pionati was shortlisted for the artistic curatorship of Short Theatre in Rome, alongside Joshua Wicke and Elena Rivoltini.