"A young figure stands at the center of a torn and layered field, built from fragments of vintage paper, spray, and printed matter that seem to construct and to consume him. Across his eyes runs the title, Il Mio Essere, my being. The gesture is the artist's constant refrain: the eyes are covered so that the words become the gaze, turning a private portrait into something universal. Here the fragments are layered onto drywall, the torn edges of the support become part of the image.

Demetrio Di Grado was born in Palermo in 1976 and lives and works in Caltagirone. After early years in hip hop and street writing across Europe, he turned to collage in 2016, carrying the language of poster art from the wall onto paper. Working with clippings from old magazines, comics, letters, and documents gathered over years, he assembles what he calls introspective posters, intimate emotional diaries in which the human figure is always at the center. His analog collages have made him a defining voice of street collage in Sicily, poised between the vintage and the present, and marked always by his tag and by the covered eyes that have become his signature.