On April 26, the arraignment of Luigi Mangione transformed the Manhattan courthouse steps into a stage for collision: protest, spectacle, and public curiosity converged in uneasy patterns. Masked faces and hidden eyes rose with chants of “FREE LUIGI,” their signs carrying anger, sorrow, and defiance. Chelsea Manning moved through the crowd for a moment, her appearance highlighting the friction between the courthouse’s swift proceedings and the public gaze. The images capture how anxiety, curiosity, and collective feeling emerge in posture, grouping, and the visual language of protest.

Not all attention celebrated Mangione. Staten Island artist Scott LoBaido wheeled in a skeleton strapped to a mock electric chair, its skull topped with a green Luigi hat, a blunt counterpoint to the celebratory costumes and performative solidarity. Luigi here functions as enigma, hero, villain, and martyr all at once, shifting meaning with every glance. Supporters and critics, death penalty opponents, and tourists jostled the barricades, each performing allegiance or moral judgment in real time. Small props, chants, and costumes register how civic ritual becomes theater, yet the images resist trivializing either side.

Composition, timing, and selective framing reveal friction without overstating it. The work refuses resolution, allowing contradictions to coexist: Luigi as fantasy and reality, Mangione as both young man and public figure, justice as procedure and spectacle. The courthouse is neither closed nor neutral; it is a site where moral debate, political theatre, and collective imagination intersect.