A smiling female figure emerges at the center of the composition, her expression masked by the word 'awareness'. Di Grado frames awareness as a condition shaped by contradiction. The image holds together moments of openness and concealment, joy and tension, revealing consciousness as something formed through accumulation and fracture. What is visible is inseparable from what is obscured.
The collage is realized through a fully analogue process where paper is cut, torn, overlapped, and reassembled. Surrounding fragments of typography, color, and pattern accumulate around the figure, creating a visual field that feels active and unstable rather than resolved.
By reactivating archival imagery within a contemporary assemblage, Di Grado transforms the past into a living material. Awareness reflects on how understanding emerges not through simplification, but through the patient negotiation of complexity, where vulnerability becomes a necessary space for perception to take shape. Demetrio Di Grado is a Sicilian artist whose analogue collage practice draws from vintage Italian magazines to explore themes of fragility, memory, and resilience. Working by hand, he transforms archival print into relevant contemporary compositions.
Nomad Art Collective presents Vulnerable as an exclusive online exhibition on Artsy, bringing this body of work to an international audience. The digital format extends the intimacy of Di Grado’s practice beyond physical space.