Miltos Manetas, a Greek-born artist, has adopted a life of Franciscan poverty as both a personal practice and an artistic project called "Francesco_2026." His work is featured in the exhibition "Vita minore. San Francesco e la santità dell’arte contemporanea" at Palazzo Collicola in Spoleto, curated by Gianni and Giuseppe Garrera. Manetas has also launched the tenth Internet Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, inviting Saint Francis as the artist, using AI conversations and a monastery in the Venetian lagoon to create an informal community of "Fratelli e Sorelle" who follow a shared rule based on poverty, absence of preparation, and divine providence.
This matters because Manetas’s project offers a radical alternative to the wealth and glamour often associated with the contemporary art world, particularly during the Venice Biennale. By embracing pauperism and using AI to simulate faith, he challenges the commercial and social structures of the art circuit, proposing a future-oriented, spiritual connection to art-making that prioritizes simplicity, coincidence, and community over spectacle and luxury.