Bea Bonifini
Burst From My Lips
Bea Bonafini is an interdisciplinary artist working between London and Barcelona. Her practice explores the cross-fertilisation of humanity with other ways of being, and the entanglement of painting with tapestry, ceramics and drawing. Her interest lies in the circularity of material and symbols, the resurrection of mythologies and their contemporary and personal reconfigurations, and the emotional landscape of colour. Her research is also grounded in unearthing Mediterranean mythologies and narratives of collaboration, hybridity and freedom of movement.
Acting like transcendental openings, the works are full of swirling scenarios that are fragmented and multi-layered, optimistic and tender. Becoming protected spheres, the works are receptacles of a lost spirituality. Chthonic beings are resurrected, grief is embraced, new and unexpected combinations are celebrated. The vitality of eroticism is infused in entangled bodies, whose boundaries and identities fuse.
Bea Bonafini graduated from MA painting from the Royal College of Art in London (2016) and BA Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art in London (2014). She was artist-in-residence at the British School at Rome (2020); commissions include site-specific works for ALA Prize, Italy (2023); Palazzo Abatellis, Italy (2022); Meta HQ, UK (2022); La Berlugane-Maleki residence, France; Maison Estelle, UK (2018); and Jonköping Council, Sweden (2018).
Selected Solo Exhibitions
Acque Amare, ALA Art Foundation (2023)
Il Chiostro Animato, Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Rome (2022)
A Monstrous Fruit, Setareh, Berlin (2022)
Animals Of Your Lips, Bosse & Baum, London (2022)
Unearthly, Nosbaum Reding, Luxembourg (2022)
Ghosts for a Post-Modern Tale, LAAA, Mexico City (2022)
Luna Piena (Stomaco Vuoto), Renata Fabbri, Milan (2021)
Sfiorare Fantasmi, Eduardo Secci, Florence (2021)
Twin Waves, Operativa, Rome (2019)
Chimère, Chloe Salgado, Paris (2018)
Shed Shreds, Lychee One, London (2018)
Dovetail’s Nest, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2017)
Selected Group Exhibitions
Diario Notturno, MAXXI, L’Aquila (2023)
Italian Painting Today, Triennale Milano (2023)
Imagina, Biennale di Gubbio (2023)
Horizon of the Void, Artocène, Chamonix (2023)
Coppa di Stelle nel Cerchio del Sole, Palazzo Abatellis Museum, Palermo (2022)
Fondazione per l’Arte, Rome (2022)
Kristen Hjellegjerde, London (2022)
The Artsy Vanguard Fourth Edition, Miami (2021)
Fondazione Sandretto, Guarene (2020)
Premio Cairo, Palazzo Reale Milan (2019)
Memories Arrested in Space, The Italian Cultural Institute, London (2018)
Fluent In The Wind
I Carry You Inside Me
Time At Hogchester Arts
My week at Hogchester Arts was filled with thoughts of our marine ancestors, the trails they left behind, how they haunt our imagination today, and our obsession with hunting and collecting.
I waited amongst the avid seagulls for low tide so that I could hobble across the coast connecting Lyme Regis and Charmouth. The syncopated clinking of hunters' hammers splitting the black limestone became the soundtrack of my fossil walks. I lost myself gazing at the crushed skeletons. The oldest records of our ancestors were laid out before us, frozen in stratified rock like pages of an ancient book - the first hypnotic spiral, the powerful jaws and giant eyes of the ichthyosaur. I later scattered the beef rock ammonites and belemnites I'd collected over the surface of my ceramic installation at the Manifesta 15 biennale, and published 'Remnants of Euphoria' with Luca Oliver - a small book which included some of the drawings I made that very week.
