Paolo Cirio

Paolo Cirio is an artist and hacktivist whose practice investigates, exposes, and subverts the data systems and infrastructures underpinning contemporary power. Working at the intersections of art, technology, and activism, his projects often transform evidence of systemic exploitation into the basis for creative regulatory advocacy. Cirio’s methods—including hacking, piracy, data leaks, identity theft, and cyberattacks—have provoked international debate and resulted in numerous legal threats. He is known for large-scale interventions such as exposing over 200,000 Cayman Islands offshore firms, publishing 1 million Facebook users on a fabricated dating platform, leaking 60,000 financial news articles and pirated e-books from Amazon, and obfuscating 15 million U.S. criminal records. Other projects have included the exposure of 20,000 patents related to technologies of social manipulation, the piracy of 100,000 Sotheby’s auction records, and an attempt to profile 4,000 French police officers through facial recognition. His early works targeted NATO, with cyberattacks and reports on its military operations since 2001. Cirio’s work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including Centre Pompidou (Paris), Tate Modern (London), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin), and ZKM Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe), as well as at festivals such as transmediale (Berlin) and Ars Electronica (Linz). He has received numerous awards, among them the Golden Nica, first prize at Ars Electronica (2014), second prize at transmediale (2006), an Eyebeam Fellowship (2012), and an NEA grant at ISCP, New York (2017).