Nunzio Miano’s The Rustic Cavalier is part of his 2024 solo exhibition, Portraits of a Distorted Society, born from his time at Il Palmerino artist residency in Florence in 2023.

By surrounding himself with portraits, Nunzio addresses a sense of loneliness he felt growing up in a diaspora – a child caught between two worlds, one of traditional Sicilian descent and the other as an immigrant growing up in Australia, never fully fitting into either camp.

Nunzio creates a world of his own where distorted heads and figures allow him the space to ‘fit in’. Whilst his pursuit of the portrait harks back through the rich history of Italian portraiture, Nunzio’s vibrant use of colour and emotive brush strokes breaks with tradition. By distorting the faces, Nunzio invites the viewer to question superficial judgements of aesthetics and look deeper to find connection.