Pacifico Silano is a lens-based appropriation artist who explores print culture, image circulation, and questions of LGBT+ identity. His work is entirely composed of repurposed fragments from gay pornographic magazines from the 1970s and 80s—an era connecting the progressive legacies of the sexual revolution with the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis. After rephotographing sections of the magazines, Silano assembles his new images into a range of seductive installations that often reference the materiality of the publications themselves, honing in on stapled centerfolds, torn sheets, or faded pages weathered by time. By contrasting familiar visual signifiers of archetypal masculinity with more romantic glimpses of overlooked tenderness, Silano points to the tensions that underlie his source material—between harshness and softness, joy and melancholy, and the liberation of gay communities and their enduring adherence to social norms.

Pacifico Silano was born in 1986 in Brooklyn, NY. He earned his BFA in Photography from the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design in Lancaster, PA (2008), and his MFA in Photo, Video, and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY (2012).

His work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Bronx Museum in New York, NY; the Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, WA; Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City, Mexico; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA; The Museum of Sex in New York, NY; The International Center for Photography in New York, NY; and others.

Silano’s art can be found in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, NY.

Silano is a past recipient of the Aaron Siskin Foundation Fellowship and the NYFA Fellowship in Photography. He was a finalist for the 2013 Aperture Foundation Portfolio Prize and was shortlisted for the Paris Photo/Aperture First Book Award for his debut publication, I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine, published by Loose Joints in 2021.