Premio Donna alla Carriera, 2017 – Trofei Internazionali di Fotografia, Benevento.
The new online exhibition WE EXIST has just been published! Enjoy the interactive experience…
WE EXIST is a collaboration between Spanish artist Cristina Nuñez, a group of students of the Oslo Fotokunstskole and groups of inmates (men and women) of three Norwegian prisons: Bredtveit, Ila and Ullersmo.
In WE EXIST Cristina Nuñez trained a group of photography students to use her method The Self-Portrait Experience® first on themselves and then on prison inmates, through a series of self-portrait workshops aimed to stimulate their creative process and self-awareness.
The project gives voice to the prison interns and involve the public in a creative dialogue through several outputs, in order to help to deconstruct and dispel stigma surrounding the labels and stereotypes often associated with offenders. Sure enough, increasing public engagement with the prison inmates’ self-portraits helps mirror back a mutual sense of humanity which supports identification rather than disassociation and alienation.
The resulting images are shown on this online exhibition, builded as an interactive visual experience for the viewer. The exhibition presents not only the results of the workshop, with individual and relational self-portraits, but also a selection of artworks by OFKS students trained to The Self-Portrait Experience® and a section of invited artists committed to the same method and autobiographical research.
During 2017, the prisoners’ self-portraits will be shown in a large-scale exhibition at the Rådhusplassen in Oslo, while the students’ works will be on show at the OFKS.
Project funded by the EEA Grants through the Norwegian Embassy in Spain.
Where are you, my love?
Cristina Nuñez launches her net art project La Vie en Rose about the search for the perfect partner.
Check out Cristina Nuñez’s Instagram profile. She’s actually publishing her whole autobiography, with images and texts from her books “Someone to Love” and “But Beautiful”, day after day.
HER/STORY. WOMEN BEHIND THE CAMERA, the exhibition at El Patio de Martín de los Heros, Madrid, (Sep. 23 – 30, opening Sep. 23, 7 pm) PRENSA
HER/STORY. WOMEN BEHIND THE CAMERA, the exhibition at Oslo Fotokunstskole, Oslo, (Aug. 29 – 30)
HER/STORY. WOMEN BEHIND THE CAMERA, the exhibition at H2O Gallery, Barcelona, (July 03 – 30)
BUT BEAUTIFUL, the show at Sponge Arte Contemporanea, Pergola (Nov. 16 – Dec. 16)
But Beautiful is Nuñez’s personal exhibition at Sponge Arte Contemporanea in Pergola (Italy) curated by Carolina Lio and featuring the artist’s most recent projects around self-portraiture: her autobiography Someone to Love, her collaborative self-portraits Higher Self and her actual project La Vie en Rose.
November 16 to December 16. The artist will hold a performance on December 7 and a self-portrait workshop on video on December 8, at Sponge.
An excerpt of Carolina Lio’s critical text, in Italian (soon we’ll publish the English translation):
“La mostra presenterà un percorso articolato e completo tra le ricerche più importanti del percorso di Cristina Nuñez che attraverso le serie Someone to Love, Higher Self e La Vie en Rose utilizza fotografie, video e performance per analizzare il rapporto con se stessa e con gli altri. Il dolore, raccontanto senza filtri, in maniera diretta, senza edulcorazioni e senza censure, è filo conduttore tra i vari lavori. La sofferenza viene esposta, dichiarata e urlata andando contro le regole sociali che pretendono un’omertà emotiva verso tutti i sentimenti scomodi. Si tratta della sofferenza di accettarsi e di farsi accettare, del dolore per la mancanza di amore, dell’orrore dalla solitudine e, più in generale, dell’intera parte buia interna all’uomo, quella stessa parte che si ha sempre più paura di esprimere.
In questo senso, Cristina Nuñez crea delle opere “contundenti” che feriscono la società intera nella finzione sempre più diffusa di una perfezione superficiale, di una gioia forzata, di una positività innaturale che si deve mostrare come strumento quasi magico per annullare la paura della morte e della solitudine, di cui si ha un terrore superstizioso. “Per avere successo bisogna avere un’immagine di successo”, ci insegnano i nostri giorni. E questa e altre frasi simili vengono ripetute finchè l’uomo non le fa proprie, appiattendosi a stereotipi emotivi, costruendosi dall’esterno e lasciando la propria architettura interna sempre più fragile, sempre più trascurata, suscettibile al crollo.
La posizione di Cristina Nuñez è, invece, diametralmente opposta e controcorrente. A lei interessa costruirsi dall’interno, rafforzarsi guardando in faccia le proprie debolezze, partire dall’innato odio di sé, senza tacerlo, senza nasconderlo, come percorso in salita da scalare per la ricerca d’amore. Si tratta di un’auto-analisi, di un metodo, di una ricerca, di una “disciplina dell’orrore”, dove l’orrore è la tragedia della vita, la disperazione dell’animo, il senso di fallimento. Un orrore che è, quindi, fragilità, debolezza, che non manca della sua bellezza, del suo fascino, della sua seduzione in quanto elemento vivo, reale, vorticoso, intenso, umano. “
NEW BOOKS RELEASE!!!
BUT BEAUTIFUL and HIGHER SELF, The Self-Portrait Experience
In 1988, in an attempt to overcome personal problems, Cristina Nuñez began to take self-portraits in private. Giving shape to her emotions and revealing her presence to the world, enabling her to turn an uncompromising gaze upon herself, but also to project herself as she wanted to be, these images became a form of self-therapy through which she learned who she is.
But Beautiful is the artist’s visual autobiography and her endeavor to transform “shit into diamonds”, to make sense of her past as a drug addict and a prostitute, to search the roots of her behaviour and her actions, finding a link with her ancestors –some of which were part of Franco’s dictatorship-, and thus to soothe her ever-present inner pain.
In the last decade, Nuñez has used her personal experience to create her unique self-portrait method, which she teaches around the world. These two paths, through which Nuñez states that, “The existing separation between art and therapy is intolerable,” now form the focus of her art.
The Self-Portrait Experience – Higher Self presents Nuñez’s written autobiography and her complete self-portrait method, including theoretical background, methodology and the method itself: an exploration of all aspects of one’s life using a series of self-portrait exercises, precise artistic criteria for the perception and choice of the works produced and guidelines to build one’s own autobiographical project.
Forewords by Paul di Felice, Del Loewenthal, Stefano Ferrari and Daniele de Luigi.
With the generous support of the Department of Culture of the Government of Catalunya and the University of Luxemburg.
Both books are now available for online purchase in this site. See the links above.
BUT BEAUTIFUL and HIGHER SELF -THE SELF-PORTRAIT EXPERIENCE-
But Beautiful obtained the Prix de la Critique 2013, Voies Off, Arles