Mile Ingrassia’s practice explores contemporary masculinity and the contradictions within its performance; how emotions and actions like tenderness, aggression, desire, and shame coexist beneath inherited cultural norms. Through large-scale figurative oil painting, Ingrassia examines the social and emotional terrain of young men navigating identity and intimacy inside a cultural framework that often seeks to deny emotional fluency. His works seek to articulate the instability of masculine performance, revealing moments where vulnerability reaches the surface. These works aim to straddle the line between queer and heteronormative expressions of masculinity. They occupy a liminal, essentially bisexual space, one that resists clear categorization and instead embraces tension, ambiguity, and fluidity.

Ingrassia grew up in a working-class household in Hamilton, Ontario, before moving to Toronto to pursue a Fine Arts Degree in Printmaking at OCAD University. Following that,Ingrassia worked professionally as a silkscreen printer before pivoting to oil painting during his master’s degree at York University. Ingrassia currently teaches at OCAD University as a Sessional Instructor. Ingrassia has exhibited both locally and internationally. His work has been recognized by municipal, provincial and federal granting bodies, and has been featured in several publications, including Hyperallergic Magazine, CBC Arts, and D la Repubblica, among others.