Ambient, Aberrant

Sonia Mangiapane is a photomedia artist working with processes defined primarily by their interaction with light, as opposed to the exclusive use of the camera. Employing a range of camera-based and cameraless methods her practice takes the form of photographic prints and hybrid works on paper. She explores concepts relating to travel, Nature and notions of photographic time. Sonia’s artistic interests are multi-layered; her approach discursive, process-oriented and experimental.

The colour darkroom is a core site of her practice. It’s a space in which she makes, rather than takes a photograph; pushing the boundaries of the photographic by undertaking conceptual and technical approaches which diverge from the photographic snapshot.

In the context of Art Au Centre, Sonia presents Ambient, Aberrant which calls into question the authenticity of the image, of Nature, of any mediated experience. It starts from the premise that the photographic gaze and the tourist gaze emerged at the same time (around 1840) and have been inextricably linked ever since. The landscape is a representation of the idea of nature; yet it is tamed, domesticated, managed. There is no nature here. The work speaks about the artifice of sightseeing, chasing the sublime, our relationship to Nature (or what we think it is). It comments on the way we experience places through our (phone) cameras.