CELLS

THE CELL

The word cell comes from the Latin cella, literally a small room. Originally it indicated the subdivision of a larger space. In the late Latin, the “cell” becomes the room of a monk and only later does it become the definition of a specific place, the basement or the cellar, as if to allude to its deep and hidden meanings. 

In an eighteenth-century scientific glossary, the word cell refers to a part of the brain that is the imaginary seat of some faculties that are not specified. In the early twentieth century, the term is associated with the current meaning of enclosed space.

The cell is the absolute protagonist of my research THE IMAGINED BODY.

I imagined it, studied it, analysed it, transformed it with new vivifying movements, I seduced it with lights and colours, I cured it through my personal therapies, I admired its beauty in my stories of metamorphosis, movements and narratives, I made spaces: ephemeral architectures and installations. 

Cells are transformed into a map of consciousness, biological landscapes into maps of being, in which the body is represented as an icon, a sacred subject and not a codified set of organs and functions. Attracted by the idea of ​​architecture as an interior mirror in which intimacy becomes landscape, I imagined “total installations” made of cells to shape sensitive spaces in which to stimulate the senses, activate endorphins and the dormant parts of the brain.

Claudia Bonollo, The Imagine Body 2001-2021 (published in AIC 2021 Proceedings, page 1409)

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GRAPHIC AND VISUAL MATERIAL: FROM BIOLOGY TO THE METABIOLOGIES

My artistic work developed digitally has changed a lot over the years. To my first collection of images on a histological sample, I have added transmuted cells taken from the liver and the colon; I have studied the functioning of our immunological and nervous system, the sight, the brain, the dream activity, the biological concept of wellbeing and pleasure.

Each transformed image, be it a cell or a neuron, or an inner landscape is digitally created in such a way that it can be enlarged on large scale.  It can be printed on any material, a rigid or soft support, opaque or transparent. 

The ensemble of these narrative metamorphoses can be turned into sensitive spaces, ephemeral and multisensorial installations, little books or short films (whose duration is variable) to be projected on a wall or some screens.

PUBLICATIONS

Diseñart

Catalogue

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