Norman Mine is a fictional persona created by London-based Italian artist Francesco Benenato. Working across collaborative and social practice, moving image, and performance, the project uses character as a tool to explore the psychological architecture of identity, labour, and the multiplicity of contemporary existence.
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The work operates through shifting personas, primarily Norman Mine and his sub-character Dino Desica. Embracing improvisation, mistakes, and non-linear processes as a counterpoint to the increasing expectation
of polish and constant productivity, the practice unfolds within the distinctive social and professional lives of its characters.
Norman Mine navigates collective imagination, shared authorship, and the subtle power dynamics of inclusion and belonging, while Dino Desica engages with ego, vulnerability, and the cinematic archetypes of Italian Neorealism.
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The moving image is the point where these strands meet, allowing fiction and everyday life, performance
and film, to collide. Here, the work also performs meta-awareness of its own act of creation; the directing, performing, and observing are all part of the work itself.
Through this, the practice reflects on imagination, reinvention, and the negotiation of self in a fractured, hyper-visible society.
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​Norman Mine is the founder of Norwood JunKAction, an eco-creative community project grounded in care and shared authorship. His work has recently been shown at Chemist Gallery and presented at The Koppel Project (Berlin), Bar.lina (Rome), Croydonites Festival, Flint Festival, and Performance Istanbul.
He has received support and nominations from Film and Video Umbrella, the Mayor of London Community Fund, Arts Council England (DYCP), and Croydon Loves You, and sits on the steering group of Culture Access, contributing his experience of learning disability to ongoing work on inclusivity.
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