From 23 September to 12 October 2026, the Italian Cultural Institute in Bucharest and the Bucharest Office of the the Italian Trade Agency present the exhibition "Între noi · Tra noi – Italy and Romania told through data", created by Nutgraf.studio and hosted at the "Ion Mincu" University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest.
Register for free to attend the event: https://luma.com/zewwekyu
"Între noi · Tra noi" ("Between us") is a cultural diplomacy project that describes the relationship between Italy and Romania through data, within the shared framework of the European Union. The ties between the two countries are among the strongest in Europe. More than one million Romanian citizens live in Italy, where they form the largest community of non-Italian nationals; Italy ranks first by number of companies registered in Romania and is the country's second-largest trading partner; every year thousands of people move between the two countries to study, to work, or for family ties. These are relationships built over generations, which today run through the everyday lives of millions of people. The exhibition explores these relationships through the power of data and information design. A time series, a map, a European comparison show how large the phenomenon really is, in which direction it is moving over time, and its multidimensional nature. The exhibition addresses a Romanian and an Italian audience at the same time. Its ambition is to give the two countries a common ground of shared, verifiable information, which is the precondition for an accurate dialogue between them.
The exhibition is built with the editorial approach of data journalism: sourcing, data acquisition, cleaning and normalisation, analysis, mapping, visualisation design, fact-checking, writing. Sources are cited in full at the foot of each panel: Eurostat, Istat, the Romanian National Institute of Statistics, Banca d'Italia, the European Commission (Erasmus+), the OECD, the Italian Trade Agency (ICE), the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, as well as the reference scientific literature on linguistic topics. Where more than one source exists for the same phenomenon and they do not agree, the panel states which one was used and why. Each panel also states the scope of the data (unit of measurement, year, population observed).
The aim of all this is to democratise data: to make them readable by anyone, while leaving room for the visitor's critical thinking. Data are the starting point of a line of reasoning; they serve to prompt reflection and to grasp the complexity of the world. In some cases, they help revisit some of the stereotypes that traditional media reinforce.
Nutgraf.studio is a data design studio founded by Jacopo Ottaviani and Piero Zagami. The studio follows the entire path from a dataset to a published object: research and verification of sources, analysis, information design, drawing and production for print, digital and exhibition spaces. It works with publishers, cultural institutions, research centres and international organisations.
