Your name
Ornella Orlandini
Place of birth
Turin, Italy
Place where you live now
Berlin, Germany
3 words to describe you
curious, introspective, empathic
Why do you take pictures?
I see photography as an instrument of investigation. Beginning with myself and my awareness, through self-portraiture and intimate performances, the image is a synthesis of a performative process, but simultaneously it maintains its own autonomy and communicative power. With my photographs I reconstruct, as a map, considerations and reflections, through a poetic narrative.
Where do you get your inspiration?
I draw inspiration from my own personal experience and awareness path, strongly based on my studies in anthropology, psychology and pedagogy.
Who are your influences?
I am inspired not only by great photographers, such as Francesca Woodman or Sarah Moon, but also by other artists that include Ana Mendieta, Anselm Kiefer and Marina Abramović.
What determines the subject matter you choose?
The choice of my topics is strongly related to my experience and the development of my personal awareness. The topics I decide to address are always relevant to me at that time.
What impact would you like your art to have?
I wish my art could trigger new reflections or considerations, create cracks or awaken curiosity to the subject matter.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
All the artwork of Anselm Kiefer, in particular "Lilith am Roten Meer"
Is there anything you want to add?
Photographing is for me a form of meditation. Whether in the act of shooting or being shot, I try to be focused intensely on the action. I begin from an idea to create images, but then I always wait for the unexpected to happen, which adds more substance to the photograph.

La Loba (2021 - ongoing)
Project statement

The wild nature has a vast integrity to it. It means (...) to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing to come into one's cycles, to find what one belongs to. Clarissa
Pinkola Estés

La Loba is the incipit, the first chapter of a project that addresses the myth of the heroic journey as a metaphor for awareness. Beginning with a personal introspection, from the matrilineal cultural origin, it extends to the search for the universal feminine, in order to reconnect with intuition and nature, from microcosm to macrocosm.

As the initiation into myth, the portfolio is a cathartic narrative between body memories, oneiric material and the narration of stories, together with the artistic practice.

I use self-shooting and performance to awaken ancestral images and effect a liberation from social superstructures.

The synthesis of this process, combining archetype, body and nature, generates a poietic activity through photographic narrative.

Being connected to instinctive nature is the basis for all regenerations. The key to re-establishing inner, individual and social harmony is rediscovering ancestral values and returning to live according to their principles.

ornella orlandini
@ornellandini