Founded in 2007 as a non-profit cultural association by a group of collectors, Associazione Barriera is a 500-square-metre space situated in a former industrial building in the Barriera di Milano neighbourhood in Turin. Through long-term exhibition formats, live events, and research-based projects, Barriera creates a place for exchange between artists, curators, writers, musicians and collectors, as well as for contamination with other artistic languages and disciplinary perspectives. Alongside its exhibition programme, the space hosts a series of more spontaneous events such as short-term residencies and community gatherings. Based on the idea of radical hospitality, this format brings together local and international participants, fostering collaborations and forms of knowledge that emerge through lived experience, as well as through situated and non-institutional forms of exchange.

Among the artists Barriera has worked with in recent years are Agnieszka Polska, Apparatus 22, Ariel Schlesinger, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Franko B, Jacopo Benassi, Jenna Marvin, Kan Xuan, Luca Bertolo, Madison Bycroft, MRZB, and Slavs and Tatars. Among institutions, it has collaborated with Artissima, EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival, Fondazione CRT, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Goethe-Institut, Lithuanian Culture Institute, Pro Helvetia, and SAHA Foundation, alongside several Italian and international galleries such as CLIMA, eastcontemporary, Galleria Continua, Galleria Gaburro, Gregor Podnar, Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, Matta, Massimo Minini, and SpazioA.