Sergio Mario Illuminato is a transdisciplinary artist born in Catania and currently based in Rome, with significant formative and professional experiences in London and New York. His practice consciously traverses multiple languages - from visual arts to cinema, from philosophy to theater, from writing to curation - not merely as a sum of skills, but as a critical and political gesture: a resistance to cultural and disciplinary standardization, a way of inhabiting the threshold as a form of existence and inquiry.
For Illuminato, language is not an abstract code but a living body - word, sound, gesture, image, relationship - weaving together literary, philosophical, artistic, and audiovisual training in a profound search for incarnation. Each expressive medium becomes a threshold, a space where the visible and invisible meet and transform, creating possibilities for genuine relationships and presence.
His practice is situated in-between: between disciplines, forms of knowledge, institutions and margins, word and flesh. Beyond being an artist and author, Illuminato is also a curator, journalist, director, and theorist. He lives and promotes this liminal condition as a foundational principle of his work, enriched by crossings and contaminations.
His civil commitment is deeply intertwined with his aesthetics. Vulnerability, a central theme in his work, is not seen as weakness but as an aesthetic of truth and an ethics of encounter. From the VulnerarTe magazine and movement to film and television productions dedicated to memory, justice, and the environment, his work reflects a politics of responsibility and openness towards others.
The body, in its fragile concreteness and its political and perceptive power, is the radiant core of his research. It is not just a theme but an ontological condition: the threshold not as a place but as a posture towards the world, an experience of relationship that opens spaces of meaning in the present time.
Educated with a Master's degree in Humanities from the University La Sapienza of Rome (2002), further degrees in Painting and Sculpture (2023), and in Cinema and Performance (2025) from the Academy of Fine Arts of Rome, he completed his education with a certified Master's in Contemporary Art at MoMA in New York (2020). A member of the Order of Journalists of Lazio since 1993, he directed from 2004 to 2010 the Information and Communication Center for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP/MAP), curating cultural projects focused on the intersection of language, perception, and ecological awareness.
As a curator, he has conceived and realized exhibitions in prestigious venues in Italy and abroad, including the former Pontifical Prison of Velletri, the Italian Cultural Institute of Paris, the Historical Museum of Villa Altieri in Rome, Palazzo Valentini, Villa Madama, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Fondazione Memmo, as well as numerous foreign embassies and academies in Italy.
Among his major projects - for which he also curated the catalogs - are the three-part cycle of Iosonovulnerabile, and the two-part cycle Intorno alla Seduzione - dedicated to Susanna de Lempicka - and Intorno al Futurismo. As an author, he has published essays and books, including Iosonovulnerabile and Corpus et Vulnus. Tàpies, Kiefer e Parmiggiani, collaborating with contemporary art magazines such as Artribune, Dialectika, E-zine, TeatroeCritica, and VulnerarTe.
As an artist, he has exhibited in solo and group shows in Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Latvia, and the United Arab Emirates, supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Italian diplomatic network.
In cinema, he has authored, directed, and produced the short film Vulnerare (world premiere at the Festival of Cinema NYC, European presentation at the Italian Cultural Institute of Paris), the art film Corpus et Vulnus, the documentary Mediterranea, and the official spot for the 30th anniversary of the Barcelona Convention, produced for the United Nations Environment Programme and the Italian Government. He also directed the documentary Intorno al Futurismo for Fondazione Memmo and the Italian Association for Cancer Research.
In television, he has conceived, written, and produced numerous programs for RAI, including Il Festival delle Azalee, AmoRoma (live from Piazza di Spagna), Omaggio a Toscanini from Teatro Argentina, and Giù la Maschera. In scena contro la Mafia, staged at the La Favorita stadium in Palermo after the massacres of 1992, in collaboration with CGIL, CISL, and UIL.
His theatrical roots are grounded in his work alongside Maurizio Scaparro at the Teatro Stabile di Roma, where he collaborated as assistant director on productions such as Memorie di Adriano with Giorgio Albertazzi and Pulcinella with Massimo Ranieri.
Through his work, Sergio Mario Illuminato proposes a radical and sensitive vision of the present: inhabiting vulnerability as an existential condition, reflecting on body and memory, opening spaces for genuine relationships and poetic resistance in an increasingly disembodied and fragmented world.
