Born From Salt — Viviana Bonura

Details
Edition: First Japanese edition, 50 limited copies
Format: Softcover, perfect binding, matte cover
Pages: 68 pages, black and white
Printing: Tokyo, Japan
Publisher: ephemere.
Size: 15 x 21cm (A5)

Description
Born from salt is about self-reconstruction and re birth through artistic research that starts from the desire for self-narration and the re-appropriation of one’s own body. It concretizes with the use of self portraiture and performative methods. The reunion with the moment of birth is a fundamental symbolic event to stage because it means retracing the beginning of one’s identity over-structures in an attempt to break them down.
This project is a thorough inspection of the origin of fractures and wanders inside the unknown to experience new forms of absence of containment. In the search for an individuality that however affirms the interference of external contaminations, whether they’re family or cultural, the work moves into a collective and social dimension, overlapping one’s private history with the political life through the act of wanting to self-determinate.
The project’s name comes from a dream where instead of wombs, human beings were born from some kind of matter that marks who we are. There I was born from salt. White as my skin, still and heavy. Salt is notoriously good for preserving things, but in some stories, it’s the protagonist of superstitious rites. It’s a sign of bad luck if thrown on the table by mistake, but it’s also a powerful purifier from negative energies. Salt drives monsters away.

About the Photographer
Viviana Bonura (Palermo, 1999) is an italian lens based artist. Her practice has a multi-media approach and combines visual and performative arts. Her research focuses on the themes of identity and existence by using her body and presence. She explores the individual both as a singular entity and as part of a collectivity by taking into consideration the surrounding space and its emotional history.
She investigates the delineation and dissolution of boundaries by diving into concepts such as liminal spaces, hereditary traumas, monstrosity, and the connection between dreams and reality. Her work is rooted in the ambiguity of the symbolic manifestation of something held in our deepest and most human form. She has a BA Degree in Graphic Design at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo and studied Media at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.