Vulnerable

Nomad Art Collective is pleased to present VULNERABLE, an exclusive online exhibition, featuring a series of original analogue collages by Sicilian artist Demetrio Di Grado. Curated by Francesco Piazza, the exhibition explores vulnerability as a condition set in material, gesture, and process.
Working with vintage Italian magazine cuttings, Di Grado constructs his compositions through a precise yet intuitive practice. As articulated by curator Francesco Piazza: "In this series, paper, an ordinary and fragile material, becomes the site of a conscious, measured gesture. Through layering, interlocking, and restraint, the artist engages in an artisanal process that does not seek to restore wholeness, but rather to hold fragments together. Breakage remains at the work’s point of departure, undramatized.
Vulnerability emerges as an inherent condition of the practice, embedded both in the material itself and in the gestures that shape it. What unfolds is a state of delicate balance, a quiet tension between what gives way and what endures. Fragility is not a lack but a mode of attentive presence, quietly revealing what survives fracture and collapse. To encounter these collages is to recognize incompleteness as a language, and the act of making by hand as a gesture of care. The viewer is invited to follow the intersections between layers, embracing instability as an open and generative condition of experience."
VULNERABLE extends the intimacy of Di Grado’s practice beyond the physical space. This digital format allows his work to be experienced as a contemplative whole, offering an international audience access to a body of work grounded in material history and contemporary reflection.
Artist Bio
Demetrio Di Grado (b. 1976, Palermo, Italy) is an Italian artist based in Caltagirone, Sicily. His practice spans urban street art and analogue collage, drawing extensively from vintage printed materials. Through fragmentation and reassembly, his work explores human presence, cultural memory, and the visible trace of manual labor. Di Grado’s collages emphasize process, imperfection, and material tension, bridging street-based sensibilities with studio-based composition.
About Nomad Art Collective
Nomad Art Collective is a contemporary art gallery based in Sicily, with an international digital presence. The gallery represents Sicilian artists, living and working on the island, whose practices engage with contemporary experience, presenting exhibitions physically and through curated online platforms.