Saint Carlo Acutis

This artwork presents Carlo Acutis as a contemporary icon, rendered through Renaissance-inspired cross-hatching and activated through augmented reality, allowing the piece to move beyond image into encounter. Carlo appears not as a distant saint, but as a living presence—ordinary in dress, luminous in spirit—reflecting a holiness grounded in daily life.

The radiant halo functions both as sacred symbol and digital signal, while architectural grids and circuitry replace traditional cathedrals, mirroring Carlo’s understanding of technology as a vessel for truth. The laptop becomes a modern reliquary: a place where devotion, intellect, and humility meet. Embedded augmented reality invites the viewer to complete the circuit, echoing Carlo’s conviction that technology should serve love, reverence, and the Eucharist—his “highway to Heaven.”

In creating this work, the artist recognizes a quiet parallel with Carlo’s mission. Like Carlo, this practice does not seek spectacle, but presence—using contemporary tools not to distract, but to draw the heart toward what is unseen. The alignment is not claimed as equivalence, but as shared intention: to let modern technology become a servant of meaning, beauty, and faith.

 The work stands as a meeting place between past, present, and future—where sanctity speaks fluently in the language of our time, and where the ordinary becomes a doorway to the eternal.