Domenico Mangano

Born in Palermo in 1976. Lives in Palermo and Rome

Domenico Mangano focuses on small stories that remain outside of globalized culture. He tracks marginal realities that, because precisely because they are marginal, maintain their authenticity, grace, and expressive strength. Portraits of outsiders are sketched, not through documentation, but by actually living the part directly. Mangano describes everyday gestures and domestic habits; employing a purposely ‘dirty' and casual use of video and photography, he explores deterioration and desolation. Elements of personal experiences are interwoven with fragments of reality grasped in an intensely poetic and human vision that, shifting continuously between private and public, expands autobiography to the community-at-large, transforming it into a collective voice. Mangano often relies on Sicily and especially his native Palermo as an allegory for the outskirts of the world. His most recent series, which includes paintings and sculptures for the first time, is dedicated to America and was made after a lengthy stay in the States.