THE IMAGINED BODY

An Ongoing Artistic Research (2001–Present)

The Imagined Body is the foundational artistic research from which all of Claudia Bonollo’s subsequent investigations have emerged.

Initiated in 2002 through the poetic transformation of microscopic images of pathological cells, the project began as an inquiry into the representation of illness and the possibility of imagining the body beyond the narratives imposed by science, medicine, economics, religion or psychology. Rather than accepting the body as a fixed object of knowledge, the research sought to rediscover it as a living territory of transformation, where biology, perception, imagination and symbolic experience continuously interact.

Over the years, the project has evolved far beyond its original premise. What began with a single cell gradually expanded to embrace the entire human body, emotions, well-being, colour, synaesthesia, living systems, biophilic environments and the imaginal dimensions of perception. Rather than moving from one project to another, the research has developed organically, allowing each new investigation to emerge from the previous one.

Like a living organism, The Imagined Body has never grown through accumulation, but through differentiation. Each body of work has developed its own language and autonomy while remaining connected to the same living structure. The research has continued to transform itself without ever abandoning its original intuition: to explore the body as a place where visible and invisible realities meet, and where art becomes a form of knowledge.

This ongoing process has generated interconnected bodies of work including Metabiologies, The Inner Colour, Synaesthesia, Colour and Sound, Chromatic Portraits, Cosmic Narcissus, Green Duets, Pinacothèque Stellaire, Personal Planets and other evolving investigations. These are not separate projects but different expressions of the same living research, each exploring a specific territory while remaining part of a continuously evolving whole.

Throughout this journey, dialogue with scholars and practitioners from many disciplines—including biology, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, philosophy and theology—has profoundly enriched the research. The writings of James Hillman, Henry Corbin, Ibn ‘Arabi, Suhrawardī and Najm al-Dīn Kubrā, together with scientific iconography and contemporary biological research, have contributed to an artistic practice attentive to the phenomena of light, colour, imagination and perception.

Today, The Imagined Body continues to evolve.

The multidisciplinary project on the cell unfolds through different articulations:

DIALOGUE WITH THE DISEASED CELL

A cycle of images of cells transfigured by the artist.

The dialogue with the cell gradually becomes a narrative, different for each organ explored, each one revealing its own symbolic and emotional landscape.

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THE CELL–ICON

The cell becomes a map of consciousness.

Drawing on the iconographic tradition of sacred images, I have approached the cell as an icon. No longer merely the scientific representation of a pathology, but an image capable of contemplation, transformation and presence.

(Light boxes)

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THE CELLULAR PORTRAIT · COSMIC NARCISSUS

Portraits of people who have recovered from serious illnesses and who are reflected within their own inner landscape.

The body escapes the limits of its own skin—indeed, even the energetic and thermal boundaries of its presence—to project itself freely onto the architectural support, dissolving its materiality and replacing it with a new, more flexible and immaterial boundary.

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THE CELL AS ARCHITECTURE

The cellular structure becomes a cartography of being, a map capable of generating three-dimensional objects for everyday use at different scales.

The microscopic image becomes a spatial principle.

(Short films · Installations)

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CELLULAR SPACES

The cell can also become an out-of-scale space: a warm, inhabitable installation designed to linger, to experience and to be moved.

The spaces that emerge may take different forms.

They may be physical environments to inhabit, or virtual environments—true sensory channels projected in multiple directions and with varying intensities—through which the body navigates without escaping the rules of its own spatial and metric reference.

In both cases, these spaces deny architecture as a merely functional container, transforming it into a sensitive and emotional environment in which the spectator becomes an integral part of the work.

(Short films · Installations)

For a deeper exploration of this ongoing artistic research, visit www.lecorpsimagine.com

METABIOLOGÍAS – EL CUERPO IMAGINADO DE CLAUDIA BONOLLO EN ICOMEM