A child stands at the center of the composition, full-length and formally posed in the manner of early twentieth-century portrait photography. The eyes are covered by a strip of text reading incompiuto (unfinished, incomplete), Di Grado's characteristic gesture of occlusion, here applied not to an adult figure but to a child. The effect amplifies the sense of a life interrupted, a story not yet told. In one hand the figure holds an ornate key, its presence at once literal and symbolic: something to be opened, or something already lost.

Around the figure, torn fragments of printed matter, gold geometric shapes, textured surfaces, and shards of color press inward from a deep teal ground. The jagged, irregular edges of the support — drywall, worked and torn — become part of the composition itself, refusing the clean containment of a conventional frame. The result is a work that feels excavated as much as constructed, as if the image has been uncovered rather than assembled.

Incompiuto is among Di Grado's most formally ambitious works, combining the intimate archival sensibility of his collage practice with a scale and physicality that commands the wall. The title resonates outward — toward childhood, toward history, toward the unresolved conditions that shape identity in Sicily and beyond.

Demetrio Di Grado is a Caltagirone-based artist whose collage practice, developed since 2016, draws on the visual language of the mid-twentieth century to interrogate identity, memory, and the layered nature of the image. His work is held in private collections and is represented by Nomad Art Collective, Sambuca di Sicilia.

Incompiuto is presented as part of IL BIVIO III: Mosaica, Coexistence without Resolution, on view at Nomad Art Collective, Sambuca di Sicilia (AG), May 9 through July 4, 2026. This work is available for purchase.