Valentina Murabito: La Donna del Mare

©Valentina Murabito, Faun_58 x 38 x 9 cm, analog b:w {photograph}, hand printed on concrete,

Recent European pictures has undergone a complicated shift towards cinematic portraiture, shifting away from the clinically excellent digital aesthetic of earlier years infavor of a extra deliberate, filmic narrative. This pattern treats the only body not as a standalone portrait, however as a nonetheless from a bigger, unseen film. By using anamorphic-style large crops, dramatic rim lighting, and a palette of “true-to-life; but moody colour grading— photographers are constructing suspense and emotional rigidity. This narrative imagery typically prioritizes intentional imperfection; arduous surfaces, grain, and unposed expressions are used as storytelling gadgets to evoke a way of historical past and human contact; that feels more and more important in an period of AI-generated perfection. The visible focus has moved from capturing how a topic appears to establishing a visible voice that means a narrative occurred simply earlier than the shutter clicked and can proceed lengthy after. Today, we characteristic the work of Valentina Murabito.

Valentina Murabito is an Italian tremendous artwork photographer and visible artist based mostly in Berlin. She studied graphic arts on the Academy of Fine Arts of Catania, Italy and continued her photographic coaching with scholarships on the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, the place she started growing her experimental method to analogue pictures.

Murabito hand-develops pictures on unconventional helps — from watercolor and baryta paper to concrete, metal, glass — creating hybrid, three-dimensional photographic objects that blur the boundaries between pictures, portray, and sculpture. In her present work, the human determine emerges inside a wild, enigmatic nature. This nature seems sacred and distant, inspiring profound respect. It is an area that awakens longing, surprise, and a way of belonging past the peculiar: a poetic “realm of desire” the place the acquainted and the mysterious converge. Her work explores materiality, corporeality, and id, giving rise to “in between creatures” that resist fastened classes of type, species, and gender. Exhibited extensively throughout Europe, her apply attracts on legendary, pure, and philosophical references, from metamorphosis and the human physique to archetypes. Her pictures are held in notable collections, together with the SpallArt Collection in Salzburg.

Instagram: @valentinamurabito.artist

An interview with Valentina Murabito follows.

©Valentina Murabito, Faun_Detail_Side view_58 x 38 x 9 cm, analog b:w {photograph}, hand prin

LA DONNA DEL MARE

One of many issues that drew my consideration to the fascinating work of Valentina Murabito was her capacity to mix historical themes and myths in up to date interpretations using all kinds of surprising media for example her factors. Her undertaking, “La Donna del Mare”, takes its inspiration from a play by Henrik Ibsen however transforms the performs’ themes right into a mythic paen to nature, intuition and the ocean. There is a tough undercurrent that pervades the work and retains sentimentality and the viewer at a distance. For Murabito wraps her themes of hope and longing in concrete, lava, brass bronze, resin and silk surfaces that promote an intentional blended message.  She performs a liminal tune between the mythic and the fashionable.

According to Murabito,” ‘La donna del mare’ is a poetic exploration of freedom, want, and the human relationship with nature. Inspired by Henrik Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, it reimagines Ellida’s rigidity between obligation and the basic name of the ocean as a meditation on id, longing, and self-determination. A lady stands on a rock by the ocean together with her arms outstretched, as if she might take flight with the big wings manufactured from Strelitzia petals, her determine merging with a wild and enigmatic nature.

©Valentina Murabito, Hunting scene_120 x 90 x 5 cm, analog b:w {photograph} on watercolor paper, fluorescent pigment, distinctive print, 2025

La donna del mare invitations viewers into an area the place analogue pictures turns into a website of transformation and reflection. The works draw the spectator into dialogue with fantasy, intuition, and the enduring pull of the pure world. Mythic allusions – from fauns to fragments of Greek narratives – mixed with the usage of fashionable supplies create a visible language that’s archaic and up to date on the identical time.

My creative apply is deeply rooted in experimental analogue pictures, the place the photographic picture is made bodily via a fancy, handcrafted course of that transcends conventional photographic prints. In this exhibition, the supplies themselves turn into a part of the narrative: pictures are hand printed on surfaces similar to concrete and lava stones or developed on materials like silk. Some items are made on metals similar to brass and bronze, whereas others are coated in resin, which reinforces depth and creates a luminous floor. These numerous substrates – from tough architectural supplies to delicate textiles – are usually not merely helps however energetic parts within the works, shaping how mild, texture, and shadow work together with the photographic picture. La donna del mare invitations reflection on how historical tales proceed to resonate in our up to date understanding of freedom, id, and the human situation. “

©Valentina Murabito, Hunting scene_View within the dark_120 x 90 x 5 cm, analog b:w {photograph} on watercolor paper, fluorescent pigment, distinctive print, 2025

MSH: Your portraits typically really feel like fragments of the Ibsen drama, The Lady from the Sea. How did you come to decide on this specific play as a theme in your undertaking?  How does your visible interpretation of the play mirror the feminist themes of Ibsen?

In my undertaking The Lady from the Sea, which I exhibited final 12 months at Galerie Kornfeld, I made an express reference to Henrik Ibsen’s play of the identical title. What initially drew me to the work was the determine of the protagonist, Ellida. When I first learn the play, I used to be struck by her deeply instinctive and nearly visceral connection to nature, notably to the ocean. Ellida feels mysteriously drawn to a sailor just because he carries the scent of the ocean with him.

While the play accommodates clear feminist undertones, in my undertaking I used to be primarily fascinated by exploring the connection between human beings and nature in the present day, and the way that relationship has advanced over time. In the principle work of the exhibition, for instance, a lady stands on darkish volcanic rocks by the ocean together with her arms open, holding massive leaves of the Bird of Paradise plant (Strelitzia). She nearly merges with them, as if the leaves might turn into wings, permitting her to maneuver, and even fly, via this pure factor.

Through these works, I wished to evoke the opportunity of feeling united with nature, whereas additionally reflecting on how this bond could have modified. Today, nature typically seems to us as one thing extra distant and enigmatic, one thing we lengthy for however not absolutely inhabit.

©Valentina Murabito, Medusa_Detail_140 x 100 x 3 cm, analog b:w {photograph}, hand printed

©Valentina Murabito, Medusa_Diptych_140 x 100 x 3 cm, analog b:w {photograph}, hand printed

What does printing on atypical supplies will let you categorical that conventional paper can not?

My selection of supplies is intently related to the motifs and infrequently provides an extra layer of that means. In many items, picture and materials are inseparable. For instance, in La Donna del Mare, the floor handled with gold pigment turns into a radiant, shimmering sea. In my work, there’s a play of contrasts between very up to date supplies, similar to plexiglass or concrete, and archaic motifs and atmospheres.

Some scenes from Henrik Ibsen’s drama have been additionally decisive in my selection of supplies. In the exhibition, for example, I offered works printed on brass after which coated with thick layers of epoxy resin. This materials evokes a way of moisture and visually recollects the shifting shimmer of sea waves. When poured in dense layers, the resin also can counsel the presence of a determine, or perhaps a wreck, slowly resting, nearly forgotten, on the seabed.

I’ve additionally ceaselessly labored with supplies from the development business – similar to concrete, bitumen, and metal – as a result of I’m deeply involved with the lack of biodiversity and the continuing extinction of species. I come from Giarre in Sicily, also known as the “capital of the unfinished.” There, greater than wherever else in Italy, huge quantities of concrete have been poured to construct buildings that have been by no means accomplished and now stand deserted. Beneath them, each actually and symbolically, the earth is suffocated, habitats for animals and vegetation disappear, and with them, in the end, our personal.

The tactile qualities of those supplies permit me to evoke sensations – similar to weight, immersion, erosion, or humidity – that might be tough to convey via conventional photographic paper alone.

©Valentina Murabito, Monsters_each 30 x 15 x 12 cm, analog b:w {photograph}, hand printed on wall bricks, distinctive prints, 2022

©Valentina Murabito, 15 x 12 cm, analog b:w {photograph}, hand printed on wall bricks, distinctive prints, 2022

MSH: Are you difficult conventional representations of girls in portraiture, or reimagining them?

In a lot of my work, the gender of the topic shouldn’t be at all times instantly clear. Early on, I loved exploring fluid identities and questioning the boundaries of gender itself. In my present work, many figures are distinctly feminine, but they resist conventional portrayals. They are mysterious, highly effective, and enigmatic – echoing mythic beings just like the sirens, inhabiting an area between want and hazard.

My visible language is impressed by late Nineteenth-century Romanticism, with its archetypal and timeless imagery. Through these figures, I intention to evoke a way of fantasy, creativeness, and otherworldliness. They are girls who’re directly acquainted and totally elusive, difficult typical portraiture whereas inviting the viewer right into a dreamlike, liminal area.

©Valentina Murabito, Moonless night time n.2_38 x 28 x 6 cm, analog b:w {photograph}, hand printed on white concrete, resin, distinctive print, 2023

MSH: Mythological references seem subtly in your work. Are there specific myths or archetypes you come back to typically? What position does symbolism play in establishing your visible worlds?

Yes, my figures and settings typically inhabit imaginary, mythic areas which are untethered to a particular time or place. This evokes a way of transcendence, thriller, and the elegant, a high quality central to Symbolism, which has deeply influenced me. I’m drawn to its timeless atmospheres, archetypal figures, and mythic imagery, from the dreamlike visions of Gustave Moreau to medieval-inspired beings similar to sirens, fairies, nymphs, and visionary saints. Certain myths and archetypes recur in my work. For instance, the faun fascinates me: a hybrid being, half human and half goat, intimately related to nature because the Roman deity of forests, fields, and flocks. This concept of liminality – of being “in between” – resonates in a lot of my figures.

In my upcoming exhibition for the opening of Berlin Art Week in September 2026 at Kornfeld Gallery, the sailor and the siren seem as central mythic figures. In this exhibition, I’m wondering if we is likely to be residing via a second “Romanticism.” Much just like the late Nineteenth century, when industrialization promised progress whereas stirring uncertainty, in the present day synthetic intelligence is reshaping our world – altering the rhythms of society, the financial system, and our internal lives. These transformations, each exhilarating and disorienting, evoke the identical awe, longing, and sense of the unknown that after outlined the Romantic creativeness. The sailor embodies the Romantic human on the threshold of modernity: a determine searching for orientation, turning towards nature as an area of longing and thriller. The siren confronts him as an ambivalent counterpart, embodying each seduction and hazard, in addition to the ability of nature. The sea, as an area of the elegant, stays a spot of transformation, journeys, and encounters with forces higher than ourselves.

©Valentina Murabito, Narcissus reflects_Side view_32 x 17 x 8 cm, analog b:w {photograph}, hand printed on moldable concrete, resin, distinctive print, 2023_Private assortment, Berlin, Germany

MSH: Do the bodily supplies change how audiences have interaction together with your pictures? What sort of emotional response do you hope your work evokes?

Yes, the bodily qualities of the supplies form the best way my pictures are skilled. In my work, motif and materials exist in fixed dialogue, typically inseparable, in order that type and content material share equal weight in how the work is perceived. This dynamic modifications the best way audiences have interaction with every bit. For instance, once I use phosphorescent pigment, which absorbs mild and glows at the hours of darkness, the work transforms. It is as if the viewer encounters it by night time, or glimpses it via a dreamlike display, immersed in a notion that feels each altered and magical.

My intention is to evoke sensations slightly than give info. These are experiences that attain the physique first, resonating within the abdomen earlier than the thoughts. I would love viewers to really feel the work in a bodily, nearly instinctive approach, as if it pulses beneath the pores and skin, slightly than being merely seen or analyzed.

©Valentina Murabito, Nausicaa. Study n.2_54 x 34 x 6 cm, analog b:w {photograph}, hand printed on watercolor paper, resin, distinctive print, 2022

©Valentina Murabito, Nausicaa. Study n.2_Detail_54 x 34 x 6 cm, analog b:w {photograph}, hand printed on watercolor paper, resin, distinctive print, 2022

MSH: How has your relationship to portraiture advanced over time? Was there a turning level while you started experimenting with various supplies?

My relationship with portraiture has advanced considerably over the previous twenty years, particularly from an aesthetic and stylistic viewpoint, whereas sustaining a constant underlying intention: to maneuver past particular person id and reveal one thing common. In my earlier works, the figures have been typically intentionally unrecognizable. I used excessive blur, motion, and experimental darkroom methods, similar to pseudo-solarization, to dissolve the topic’s id. From the start, I used to be not fascinated by a documentary portrait, however slightly in extracting from every particular person a extra common human presence. Over time, these figures have turn into more and more archetypal and mythic, embodying an enigmatic, nearly everlasting human presence. I’m particularly drawn to figures like Medea, who categorical a strong and ambivalent femininity, poised between the human and the divine. In my newer works, it feels as if I’m trying to find a divine dimension inside the human type. The figures possess one thing sacred that creates a sure distance but evokes a profound respect.

A key turning level got here round 2015, once I shifted my course of and returned, in a approach, to the origins of pictures by working with photographic emulsion itself, the substance that captures and holds mild. This allowed me to maneuver past conventional baryta paper and start printing on supplies similar to concrete or wooden. These supplies enter right into a symbiosis with the picture, and their up to date nature creates a rigidity, nearly a counterpoint, with the archaic aesthetic of the figures.

©Valentina Murabito, Primal scream_31 x 22 x 16 cm, analog b:w {photograph} on concrete fluorescent pigment, distinctive piece, 2025

©Valentina Murabito, Primal scream_View within the dark_31 x 22 x 16 cm, analog b:w {photograph} on concrete, fluorescent pigment, distinctive piece, 2025

MSH: If your work have been a fantasy, what would its ethical be?

Since my childhood, I’ve been deeply captivated by a selected fantasy: the return of Odysseus to Ithaca, his homeland, as informed by Homer within the Odyssey. To me, this journey is greater than a narrative, it’s a image of returning to our origins, to the very essence of what it means to be human, to who we have been earlier than any cultural constructs formed us. Metaphorically, I see on this fantasy a return to nature, not as distant spectators, however as beings absolutely immersed in it, inseparable from its rhythms and its life. There is a profound intimacy right here, a reminder that we’re a part of one thing higher, a sacred connection that predates historical past itself.

Through my work, I search to inhabit this area, to evoke this primordial concord, the place people and nature coexist in a quiet, ancestral resonance. My figures, my pictures, attempt to seize that fleeting sense of belonging, of being directly mortal and timeless, rooted but in dialogue with the everlasting.

©Valentina Murabito, Self portrait. Empedocles on Etna II_72 x 53 x 3 cm, analog b:w {photograph}, hand printed on silk, wooden, distinctive print, 2024_Private assortment, Munich, Germany

©Valentina Murabito, The woman from the sea_120 x 100 cm, analog b:w {photograph}, hand printed on watercolor paper and gold pigment, distinctive print, 2023_Private assortment, Spain

©Valentina Murabito, The Lady from the Sea. Study_39 x 21 cm, analog color {photograph} on fluorescent plexiglass, distinctive print, 2025

©Valentina Murabito, The wanderer_40 x 20 cm, analog b:w {photograph} on watercolor paper and gold pigment, distinctive print, 2025

©Valentina Murabito, When cause sleeps II_40 x 30 x 3 cm, analog b:w {photograph}, hand printed on concrete, resin, distinctive print, 2024_Private assortment, Berlin, Germany

©Valentina Murabito, Exhibition view n2_Valentina Murabito_La Donna del Mare, 68projects by Kornfeld Gallery Berlin, 2024:25

©Valentina Murabito, andrea katheder, for Galerie Kornfeld Berlin 2024