Sara Tonioni (Modena, 2000) lives and works between Italy and Sweden. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Photography from the Libera Accademia di Belle Arti in Rimini, where she graduated with honors. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Photography at HDK-Valand in Gothenburg.
Her artistic practice revolves around an autobiographical approach, yet with an eye toward the collective, navigating between personal experiences and a shared narrative. At the center of her work we often find the human figure, in constant dialogue with nature in all its nuances—a fundamental element for exploring themes related to identity, memory, and transience.
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Chapter One: Home (2024)
Chapter One: Home explores loneliness, feeling out of place, and everything that comes with the decision to move abroad. The photographs depict the artist inside her home, a space that proved to be emotionally oppressive from the very beginning. Each room becomes an observation point for an inner unease: the bedroom window, where she experienced the aggression of the roommate with whom she was supposed to share a safe haven; the kitchen, where she confronts daily loneliness and eats more out of necessity than for pleasure; the doors, both symbols of anxiety and fear of what lies behind them; finally, the shower, the only space where she felt protected, an intimate place to let go of tension and allow herself to be vulnerable.
The project uses self-portraiture and a white thread as a symbol of oppression and powerlessness, wrapping around the body, suffocating it and restricting its movements; however, the state of emotional oppression inflicted by others compels the artist to forge a new connection with herself.
