All Natural

All Natural
Exhibition

Borrowing the title of Walter Benjamin's milestone, Walter Siti ironically stated that the body is, now, in the age of its technical reproducibility¹. It is probably from the intolerance of such a condition-that of human bodies, estranged from the environment that originates their material and biological roots, human bodies tending to be separated from their animal dimension: ultracorps, multicorps, sub-bodies²- that Liina Salonen decides to focus her research on the relationship between the naked body and nature. The artist cannot but note the contradictory nature of this relationship (nature is mother, it is a land of origins as deep as it is disowned; man is an exile who escapes/inhabits too artificial shelters), and attempt to overcome it, renewing an unmediated bond with the environment. Salonen, therefore, recovers her own identity at the very moment she attempts to dissolve it, to effect a fusion between the body and nature, with which she reestablishes an intimate and primordial relationship.



In Salonen's poetics, estrangement takes on a dual significance, describing both man's progressive estrangement from nature and his particular condition as an expatriate. Indeed, her personal story presents an interesting analogy with the path of one of the artists who most influenced her work: Jamie Beck, an American photographer who, following a traumatic event, left her country to live and work in France. Traces of that influence emerge in Salonen's peculiar use of light, manipulated, at the post-production stage to achieve a semi-pictorial effect.
The earth, which in the landscape series appears arid and dark, is illuminated in the photographs that make up the series of self-portraits, thus highlighting a double movement (from the natural and animal realm to the exclusively human one; and vice versa) and sealing a new harmony in the synthesis of these elements.


¹Francesco Pacifico: Walter Siti, with Walter Siti, “La Notte,” ep. 30, April 30, 2024.
²Walter Siti: The invasion of the body snatchers has made us all more fragile: the dream of being a bodybuilder, “Tomorrow,” April 12, 2024.


Written by Lucia Galfo


Exhibitions
Hemingway, Modica, Sicily, Italy July-Sept 2024
Prima Classe, Ragusa, Sicily, Italy Oct-Nov 2024