Giulia Mangoni’s Exhibition at Galleria Operativa in Rome
Galleria Operativa in Rome presents Il Sogno della Ragione Genera Visioni, the new solo exhibition by Giulia Mangoni, winner of the Painting category at Premio Combat 2023, exploring the relationship between territory, memory, and folk traditions.
The exhibition, opening on October 23 at the gallery’s premises on Via del Consolato, marks Giulia Mangoni’s return to Galleria Operativa with a new body of work created specifically for the occasion. Through a series of personal visions, the artist deepens her connection with the communities and cultural contexts that inform her practice, exploring the relationship between lived experience, imagination, and collective identity. The new works draw on imagery rooted in everyday life and vernacular traditions. Religious processions, public squares, patron saint festivals, and collective rituals become the starting points for a painterly investigation in which lived experience, observation, and imagination intertwine, offering a representation of place that goes beyond mere documentation.
At the heart of Giulia Mangoni’s practice lies a reflection on landscape as a site of historical, social, and cultural stratification. Through archival research, observational drawing, and the development of site-specific projects, the artist investigates the transformations of places and the relationships between communities, their traditions, and the spaces they inhabit. Painting thus becomes a means of reinterpreting reality, bringing together recognizable elements and imaginary dimensions.
A central role in this exploration is played by Ciociaria, a region in southern Lazio where the artist grew up and to which she chose to return after an extended period of study and work abroad. Historically associated with the imagery of the European Grand Tour, the region is now characterized by a landscape shaped by profound agricultural, industrial, and social transformations. Mangoni examines these layers without treating them as expressions of an unchanging identity, instead using them to explore broader questions concerning the representation of history, the construction of place, and the relationship between memory and contemporary life.
Her practice revolves around what the artist describes as an ethics of return, understood as a process of reconnecting and engaging with her places of origin and the communities that inhabit them. Having grown up between Italy and Brazil, Mangoni has developed an artistic language in which autobiography intertwines with collective research, enriched by dialogue with artisans, agronomists, livestock farmers, writers, and anthropologists. These diverse forms of knowledge and perspectives become integral to a creative process that regards the artwork not as a definitive outcome, but as a temporary means of gathering, interpreting, and transmitting experiences.
In Il Sogno della Ragione Genera Visioni, this interest takes shape through painting that draws on vernacular imagery and expressions of popular culture, transforming everyday scenes and situations into compositions in which reality opens up to new possibilities of interpretation. Local traditions are not simply reproduced but reinterpreted through a personal perspective that brings their historical, symbolic, and social dimensions into dialogue. The exhibition thus continues an investigation in which the territory becomes a space for observation and experimentation, generating narratives that move between individual memory and collective identity.
This attention to the communal dimension is also evident in projects developed by the artist beyond traditional exhibition spaces. Among these is Cinevetrina, an initiative through which Mangoni organizes exhibitions dedicated to artisans from Ciociaria within the historic cinema of Isola del Liri, creating opportunities for encounters between artistic practices, local knowledge, and the public. A similar approach can be found in Il Salmerino Viandante, a project developed in San Lorenzo Dorsino, in Trentino-Alto Adige, as part of Una Boccata d’Arte, an initiative promoted by Fondazione Elpis and Galleria Continua. In both cases, the involvement of local communities and professionals forms a central element of her research, extending the role of painting towards forms of collaboration and shared cultural production.
The new solo exhibition in Rome follows Stratigrafie del presente, curated by Stefano Raimondi at the MAC – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Lissone, which focused on the artist’s painterly research in recent years. Her artistic journey has progressively unfolded through exhibitions at institutions and exhibition spaces in Italy and internationally, consolidating a practice in which the local dimension becomes a starting point for exploring broader themes.
Among the recognitions that have marked this journey is the Combat Prize 2023, awarded to Giulia Mangoni in the Painting category for her work Garigliano sogna Ecuador. The painting forms part of her ongoing investigation into territories, cultural identities, and the possibilities of pictorial representation, addressing themes that continue to inform her most recent work.
Giulia Mangoni (Isola del Liri, 1991) is an Italian-Brazilian artist who lives and works in her hometown. After completing a Foundation Degree in Art & Design at Falmouth University of the Arts in 2011, she graduated in Painting from the City & Guilds of London Art School in 2014, where she received the Skinner Connard’s Travel Prize and the Chadwick Healey Prize for painting. She subsequently earned a Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2019. In 2020, she participated in the third edition of CASTRO Projects in Rome, supported by the Scovaventi Italian Fellowship.
Throughout her career, she has presented solo exhibitions in Italy and abroad, including From the Island of Liri, curated by Juliana Leandra at Dreambox Lab in New York; Bits & Cream. Metabolizzazione d’Archivio at ArtNoble in Milan; Nambur at IUNO in Rome; and La Strega si Trasforma Persino in Vento, curated by Beatrice Benella at Operativa Arte Contemporanea in Rome. She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including The Futures We Speak at the Clemente Art Center in New York, Roma Pittura Emergente Oggi at 21Gallery in Treviso, Geographies of Memory at LAMB Arts in London, Vivere di Paesaggio at APALAZZOGALLERY in Brescia, and Ladder to the Moon at Monitor in Rome.
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