The Lebanese-Venezuelan artist unpacks coming of age, heritage and the power of art as a beacon for change with Glass.
DESPITE glacial temperatures hitting the upper hemisphere at an increasingly troubled pace, it’s hard not to find a warm solace across the sun-tinged canvases of Lebanese-Venezuelan artist Angelo Mansour. Upon closer inspection, his strokes make for a world full of poignant thrills, but more on that later.
Photograph: Giulia Mantovani
Hailing from Lebanon, Mansour and his family swiftly moved to Nigeria for 12 years because of his father’s job. “The minute I popped out, I flew there!” he chuckled between sips of water. “And when I moved, I loved it.” The cross-pollination of cultural references that constitute Western Africa’s beauty was pivotal for Mansour’s growth, further sparking a sense of awareness for the breadth of tribes that shape the country into one of the most populated in the whole continent.
“I felt like I was more aware of different cultures, and I honestly couldn’t feel diverse skin tones while living there,” he says. “It felt like we’re all the same, and people were very intellectual and colliding with one another.” After a period spent in Victoria Island, he returned to Lebanon to complete his training. As he got older, he began to love it more and more.
Photograph: Giulia Mantovani
“After high-school, I went on to study two years of Architecture at university,” he reminisces. “I then moved to Milan aged 19, the year that the Beirut explosion happened; I called my dad on that day expressing my eagerness to move out.”
Mansour then applied to Milan’s famed Politecnico, in the faculty of Architecture. “I didn’t like it, as I didn’t find my artsy self in the course!” he exclaims. “I felt like it was very limiting artistically speaking, and from an expressive point of view I decided to change my major into Visual arts, where I had so much freedom of expression”.
Photograph: Giulia Mantovani
As a person of great poise, it seems apt to ask about his first bond with the art world. “Since I was a child, I never knew how to express myself verbally,” he blithely recalls. “I was a very shy kid, on my own, doing my thing; If I was in class, I was drawing while if I was at home, I would do something that involved storytelling, reading books, all that.”
Luckily, Mansour has a mother who paints. “While she paints, I’d be with her drawing and I must admit that she was always my supporter, giving me sketchbooks. I remember always buying Archie Comics, through which I really started sketching. If I saw Lilo and Stitch on TV, I’d draw it. So anything that really captivated me as a child, I drew”.
Photograph: Giulia Mantovani
His practice leans on both painting and poetry, but how does he manage to bridge both aspects and infuse them into his work? “When I went back to Lebanon, we had this very special artist named Khalil Gibran who was one of the most interesting artists I’ve really looked into. In a way, he was a multimedia artist who wrote, painted and carved on trees. So with his way of expressing himself and creating art, I really admired it and grew up writing and understanding how to inspire from it.”
Mansour’s penchant for poetry, on the other hand, stems from a singer, Fairuz. “Do you know how Adele is one of the key voices of the Western world? We have Fairuz who’s the Adel of the Middle East!” he exclaims, explaining how everyone’s inspired by her.
Photograph: Giulia Mantovani
“The references I have come from my backgrounds, likewise how I was raised, what my people are going through and what my country is going through. And honestly, not only my mom was a painter. My grandma was a seamstress and I just love the conversations I have with her about her culture and where she’s from. Last time, I didn’t know her grandma came from Syria, and I want my paintings to express my background, what I’m going through as a person and what it’s like being an Arab slash Latino at this age”.
Photograph: Giulia Mantovani
Living through a wealth of cultures while coming of age is no mean feat, so I can’t help but wonder who the subjects portrayed in his paintings are. “That is a very, very interesting point,” he offers. “It’s mostly family, friends, and religion. Most of my art topics are about feeling lost and sometimes, I feel very confused”.
After a short pause, I can sense the depths of Mansour’s identity. They stretch far beyond the familiar, a stroke or a painstaking tint, pointing to vulnerability and emotion-laced turmoil in equal measure. “If you can’t go home, where is home?” He muses, his head tilting with dismay. “Once I step onto the ground of my country, even though it’s in a bad state, just listening to my first language just feels welcome. But knowing that I can’t be there, and I can’t live there, and I can’t work there makes me wonder where I belong. It’s just confusing”.
Photograph: Giulia Mantovani
Photograph: Giulia Mantovani
This is exactly the reason why Mansour uses art as a beacon for change, escapism and utter freedom against the cruel tides that are shaping his country and the world at large. “How I want to feel with my paintings is a safe space where someone could just view it and relax, even though they have a lot to say in the sense of belonging and culture, religion and faith. I want someone to understand, even though the world is a scary place and there’s a lot of issues going around it, to feel safe, sit down, take a good breath and come to terms that there’s a lot of complex problems going on”.
As for colours and textures? “The colours I choose are very light. I want to feel like it’s breathable. I want to capture the essence of oxygen, because it’s also a very smooth texture as well. On the side of techniques, it’s mostly based on oil painting,” he opines. “I started with sketching, drawing and I was very comfortable with pencils, just using charcoal. And then, when I went to Naba, I had this professor who changed my whole perspective into oil painting”.
Photograph: Giulia Mantovani
So why put himself through this shift? “I’m such a perfectionist that I get stuck with my old paintings,” he says. “I naturally just go back to my old paintings to add a certain touch, to understand what I want to convey. I create such a deep connection with each painting and having an art block comes to me once in a while; what helps, though, is that I break that bridge when I write and it flows again naturally.”
It is easy to be entranced, as I clearly was, by Mansour’s line of thought, but beneath his soulful persona it seems like he’s scared of being type-cast one day. “What scares me the most about my future as an artist is being very culturally attached to where I come from, resulting in an issue,” he admits.
“I’m afraid one day people will fail to work with my race or nationality because of what’s been going on with the war, but I’m hopeful I’ll never have to go through this.” And, just like Mansour, I hope the same.
by Chidozie Obasi
Photographer: Giulia Mantovani (@giuliamantovaniph)
Stylist: Chidozie Obasi (@chido.obasi)
Grooming: Loris Rocchi (@lorisrocchi)
Producer: Jessica Lovato (@jessicalovato_)
Fashion Coordinator: Davide Belotti (@coccobeloooo)
Photography assistant: Antea Ferrari (@_effe_a_)
Styling assistant: Veronica Vaghi (@vaghiveronica)
Clothing Credits:
Look 1: Jacket BOSS | Top BARON STUDIO | Skirt THE FRANKIE SHOP | Trousers MEIMEIJ
Look 2: LOUIS VUITTON
Look 3: PAUL SMITH
Look 4: Shirt GIVENCHY | Trousers HERMÈS
Look 5: Coat BOSS | Trousers THE FRANKIE SHOP
Look 6: PRADA