Franz Cerami's Digital Graffiti Brings Light to Peripheries

Franz Cerami (Naples, 1963) creates digital graffiti projections that illuminate urban peripheries, merging oil painting, photography, video, and digital tools. His project Lighting Flowers uses videoprojections to color concrete surfaces with moving shapes and colors, targeting neglected areas. Cerami's father was friends with Lucio Amelio, and his parents collected works by Christo, Rauschenberg, Vasarely, and Alfano. He began experimenting with Polaroid at age 14. After periods in France and England, he returned to Italy to make short films and combine audio, video, photography, and oils with technology. Lighting Flowers has been realized in Rome and Naples, with upcoming projections in Berlin, London, Lisbon, Paris, São Paulo, Shanghai, and New York. Another key work is Migrant Sirens, addressing migration as an opportunity. Cerami's installation Eggs and Skulls (2017) at Museo Madre in Naples reinterpreted city icons like Parthenope, skulls, Vesuvius, horses, and San Gennaro, alongside works by Mimmo Paladino and Rebecca Horn. He teaches rhetoric and digital storytelling at Università Suor Orsola Benincasa and runs storytelling labs in three schools in Scampia with cooperative L'uomo e il legno. Cerami documents his night-time projections with cameras, drones, and a steadicam.