“Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.”
―
some pictures
formed from the notions of Bauhaus, that taught him to combine the fields of philosophy art and design … Curator, Writer, Creative Director, Researcher and Artist-Performer with a primary background in philosophy and critical studies with outputs in contemporary art, fashion, ecology and design
Leonardo Caffo was born in Catania, Italy, in 1988.
After completing his classical high school diploma at the Liceo Ginnasio Statale Mario Cutelli, he moved to Milan. At the University of Milan he graduated in Philosophy a year ahead of schedule, then earned a master’s degree in Logic and Philosophy of Science.
In 2011 he moved to Turin, having won a PhD position in Philosophy at the University of Turin. He obtained his doctorate in Aesthetics and Theoretical Philosophy under the supervision of Maurizio Ferraris.
From 2015 to 2019 he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Turin, based at LabOnt – Laboratory for Ontology. From 2017 he taught for three years at the Politecnico di Torino as an adjunct professor, holding the first course ever offered there in Ontology of Project and Design. During these research years he spent long periods abroad: at the Institut Jean Nicod in Paris, in Kassel on a DAAD fellowship, at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, and at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
Also from 2017 he taught at fine arts academies. His first chair was in Aesthetics at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan: after three years on contract he won a tenured position as Senior Lecturer, which he held until 2026. In the same years he taught at the MADE Program in Syracuse, where he created the Rethinking Lampedusa residency, whose results were exhibited at the Malta Biennale. At Abadir, the fine arts academy in Catania, he founded and directed Mater Matuta, the first master’s program in Mediterranean curatorial studies.
Between 2015 and 2025 he taught Aesthetics applied to fashion, design and architecture in various capacities at IULM University, RUFA – Rome University of Fine Arts and Pegaso University, and was a visiting scholar at several universities abroad for periods of study, teaching and research.
Alongside his academic career he has developed an artistic and curatorial practice. His main appointments include curator at the Triennale di Milano (2019–2021), Philosopher in Residence for Special Projects at Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art (2021), member of the executive committee of MAXXI in Rome (2021–2022), and advisor to the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
In 2017 he founded Walden Milano, a literary café and cultural hub that has hosted more than 200 exhibitions and was named by the New York Times among the most innovative venues in Italy. In 2025 he traveled to wartime Ukraine on a research grant to document the state of the arts in a country unjustly invaded. In 2026, in his hometown, he co-founded Blue595 with the actress Tea Falco: housed in the Istituto dei Ciechi Ardizzone Gioeni in Catania, it is a research center for Mediterranean arts and a hub for performing arts events.
He curates exhibitions in museums, galleries and institutions in Italy and abroad, at times also working as an artist, individually or as part of a collective. From 2015 to 2020 much of this work took shape in the research agency Waiting Posthuman Studio. His most significant exhibitions and actions include Everything that generates light is destined to explode at BIM Research Gallery, Milan (2022), and Lì at the Vorres Museum, Greece (2024).
Since 2010 he has worked extensively in journalism and publishing: he is a columnist for Corriere della Sera and Internazionale and writes for leading Italian and European newspapers and magazines. For three years he worked at Radio Rai in Rome, writing and hosting radio programs and later podcasts. He writes the Substack newsletter #altrianimali, on current affairs and political philosophy.
He has conceived, founded and run numerous magazines and publishing houses: he relaunched and coordinated Flash Art’s publishing house, directed the journal Animot and Parola Magazine, and has combined anarchist and antispeciesist activism with philosophical research across many editorial projects. He contributed for a decade to A – Rivista anarchica, now closed.
His philosophical research, recognized with numerous awards, comprises some twenty books published by Italy’s leading publishers (including Einaudi, Bompiani and Mondadori). It explores the boundaries of the human, the critique of anthropocentrism and contemporary posthumanism, an unconventional vision of architectural design, an anarchist epistemology, and an interdisciplinary inquiry into the arts he calls “anticipationism”. His main titles include Fragile umanità (2017), Quattro capanne (2020), Essere giovani (2021), Velocità di fuga (2022) and Anarchia (2024).
He has also written fiction, including Il cane e il filosofo (2020) and Animal Liberation Front (2023).
As a lecturer and interviewer he has engaged with some of the most prominent voices in international philosophical and cultural debate, including Slavoj Žižek, Martha Nussbaum, Byung-Chul Han, Gianni Vattimo and Toni Negri.
