CAINO's "ICONA" exhibition in Perugia investigates the sacred in contemporary times

Opening on April 30, 2026, at 6 p.m., at the Santa Maria della Misericordia Exhibition Hall in Perugia, the exhibition ICONA di CAINO, curated by Beatrice Bortoluzzi, will be on view until May 18. The exhibition project is part of a reflection on the role and transformation of thesacred image in contemporary times, addressing the theme through a series of works that depart from the photographic tradition to take on a more complex and layered dimension. CAINO’s intervention develops along a line of tension between devotion and disenchantment, between iconographic memory and the rupture of visual language. Within an exhibition space that already in its name recalls a duality between protection and vulnerability, the path is configured as an investigation that poses questions. The images presented are offered as fragments that suggest a fracture of the common imaginary.

Through processes of superimposition and laceration, CAINO constructs works that approach an almost archaeological practice. The image is treated as a surface to be traversed, in which layered elements emerge that refer to a symbolic dimension that is still active. In this process, icons of different origins, from Byzantine and Renaissance to contemporary media icons, are superimposed and blurred, losing their original contemplative function. Within the exhibition, the figure of the Virgin takes on a new connotation, distancing her from the exclusively religious dimension and bringing her closer to a contemporary reading, in which the body becomes a vehicle for a narrative also linked to political and social issues. In this context, the body itself ceases to be representation and is configured as testimony, while the image loses its function as an object to be contemplated to become an element of visual friction.

ICONA thus presents itself as a device that solicits a stance on the part of the viewer. The project questions the persistence of the sacred in a society characterized by strong visual exposure and dynamics of image consumption. The reflection also extends to the dimension of the human, questioning what remains when the image becomes the main language of communication. CAINO’s work is part of a European tradition that usesart as a critical tool, recalling, in its approach and luministic tension, experiences from Caravaggio to contemporary research. In this perspective, light becomes an element capable of revealing latent aspects of reality.

The exhibition is realized under the patronage of the Umbria Region and the Municipality of Perugia, with the support of Amnesty International and Open Arms. Placed in a public and institutional context, the exhibition highlights a civil function of art, understood as a tool capable of restoring complexity to a present that tends to simplification, even in the representation of pain.

CAINO's "ICONA" exhibition in Perugia investigates the sacred in contemporary times

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