Modern society is founded on a clear division between the natural and the human universe that leaves little space for hybridisation, particularly within capitalist social and political systems. This is a centuries-old tradition of Western thought and philosophy, which was built on binary oppositions - spirit vs. matter, intellect vs. body, male vs. female, individual vs. collective - constructed to establish and sustain patriarchal power, expressed in the legitimation of a type of knowledge produced only through ‘pure’ reason and rejecting the complexities of other ways of knowing that enmesh intuition, feeling, mind and body.

The body is a revelation as is landscape questions such separations, seeking new formulas of representation of the body understood no longer only as a sensitive instrument at the disposal of the individual but as a guide for the integration of the individual into the body of the world.

Realised from 2019, the project reworks some self-portrait and landscape photographs from the author's archive through a gestural process of decontextualisation and assemblage of images. The photograph is pushed to its limits: the body is blurred, decomposed and dissected. Subtracted from the patriarchal canons of visual representation, it finds a new expressive force - it reveals itself to others and to itself - and can reclaim its own narrative.

What can a body say about itself? How can we get back in touch with it? Can we become part of the world's body through our senses? What types of knowledge can the relationship between bodies - both human and non-human - provide?

Sofia Masini tries to answer these questions visually by playing at destroying her own photographs. The result is the creation of an imaginary and timeless place, where the body becomes the guide to an intimate and infinite map of correspondences between internal sensibility and the external world.

The book has been published by Witty Books in 2023 and you can see it here.