“Like a Knife in the Sun” is a radical experimentation that focuses on the point of contact between Eros and Thanatos, the convergence between love and death, the impossible desire of continuity and its inevitable disintegration, bringing out the dominant charm of eroticism. Through physical and digital manipulation of her own photographs and archival images, Benzi explores that liminal zone between a burial, deadly and loss idea and an idea of eroticism and sexuality, that common denominator between the celebration of life and its transitory and ephemeral condition. Creating a visual itinerary of the path to the pinnacle of pleasure that we, as human beings, can experience only with the grief of its loss, and consequently has to be shredded as this encounter is already dead.
«Eroticism, it may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death».
Georges Bataille, Eroticism, 1957.
Chiara Benzi (b. 1994, Italy) is an artist and photographer based in Bologna. She graduated in Drama, Art and Music Studies at the University of Bologna. Alongside she attended the Photography Centre Spazio Labo’. Her practice is realized through physical and digital manipulation of her own photographs and archival images, reflecting on the interaction and interpretation of the imaginary encountered in a personal manner, and oscillating between familiarity and alienation. Her work has been exhibited in several group exhibitions around Europe. In 2021 she was selected as a FRESH EYES Talent by GUP Magazine and as one of “New Talents 2021” by Photographic Exploration Project. She currently works with platforms active in the field of music and performing arts.
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