Salvatore Vitale (artist)

Salvatore Vitale (born 1986) is an Italian visual artist, educator, and editor based in Switzerland.

Vitale is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of YET magazine and the author of "How to Secure a Country."

Vitale is a lecturer at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, where he leads the Transmedia Storytelling program at Camera Arts.

Vitale was born in 1986 and raised in Palermo, Italy.

In 2005, at the age of 18, Vitale left Sicily to study in Lugano, in the southern Swiss canton of Ticino.

He studied fine arts at the Zurich University of the Arts.

After his studies, Vitale began publishing YET magazine, a Swiss-based international photography magazine devoted to contemporary photography.

Since 2012, YET magazine has developed into a platform for debate for a community of photographers and photography scholars.

In 2014, he started working on his visual research project called "How to Secure a Country," after Switzerland voted against mass immigration.

While working on his project, Vitale began to collaborate with security researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich for four years.

Curated by Giangavino Pazzola, the exhibition consists of more than forty works belonging to two groups of works, related to research carried out by Vitale since 2014.

"Persuasive System" is an interactive installation focused on the use of CCTV in public spaces.

Decompressed Prism is a video installation that combines of fictional and documentary elements, video archives, text, sound design and real data that create an uncertain and mischievous space.

Decompressed Prism was exhibited as a digital installation commissioned by the MBAL – Musée des beaux arts Le Locle.

Vitale's "Death by GPS" is a multi-part project that deals with the day laborers and mining in the Gauteng region of South Africa.

The project explores issues such as labor exploitation, the gig economy, and automated processes in the context of post-capitalism.

According to Vitale during his interview with Vogue Italia, "The aim of the project was to show the Swiss security system from within by accessing the whole apparatus to almost become part of it without, at the same time, adopting an investigative approach or a judgmental outlook." The project has been awarded various accolades, including the 2017 Phmuseum Grant, and was presented its complete version as part of a solo exhibition opening at The Swiss Center for Photography Winterthur in Switzerland in 2019.

Vitale was featured "FOAM Talent" by FOAM (Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam) and his project "How to Secure a Country" was listed as one of the Favorite Photobooks of 2019 by LensCulture.

A wide selection of "How to Secure a Country" is in the collection of Fotostiftung Schweiz in Winterthur.

In 2021, Vitale's "How to Secure a Country +" had its first solo exhibition presented in an Italian institution and was hosted by CAMERA.

It was part of the series of exhibitions "Passengers. Tales from the New World", a program dedicated by CAMERA to mid-career artists who most represent examples of innovation in contemporary visual language.