1celand is the first work taken during a solo trip by photographer and curator Irene Tondelli. Travelling in a small car and always sleeping in a tent, the photographer circumnavigated Iceland, trying to capture the contrasts between the small towns and the wide open spaces of Iceland.
For the author, wild nature is a common thread that links shot after shot throughout her artistic production, ranging from documenting landscapes in the Arctic Circle to South America.
My obsession is always the same: to investigate the intimate relationship between nature and humanity, between civilisation and wilderness. To find out what price we are willing to pay in terms of fatigue, loneliness and danger in order to regain the feeling of extreme freedom that I mainly find in almost unreachable landscapes.
Tondelli, who has always been fascinated by maps, and geography, has recently extended her research to the field of photography curatorship.
Returning from a trip to Peru at the end of 2019, I realised that taking photographs was no longer enough for me. That in order to decode some of the themes born during that trip, I needed to move to other playgrounds, broaden the horizon, listen to other voices. The step towards curatorship came very naturally. I had already been involved in creating events and exhibitions for other authors in my city and I found it very stimulating because it allowed me to completely overturn my point of view.
For Tondelli, everything that can allow her to live and deal with photography is worth trying, testing. That’s why, during the last year, she decided to create her first wide-ranging curatorial work: an online platform dedicated to hosting female curators and photographers from all over the world.
During the 2020 lockdown in Italy, like most people, I spent a lot of time at home. I had time to set up the curatorialmaps.com project. It is an online archive where I select, always in synergy with other curators whom I invite to participate in the project (fist guest curator is Davida Carta), a group of artists who share certain themes. I care about consistency, so I have tried in my curatorial work to give continuity to my photography research. The concepts of centre, periphery and geography are therefore also in the foreground this time. This has inevitably led to an exhibition project entitled Without Geography You Are Nowhere\Everywhere, which will open online shortly. With the hope of turning it into a real exhibition in the near future, as soon as the Covid emergency is resolved.
About Irene Tondelli
Graduated from Libera Accademia di Belle Arti in Brescia with a BA in Photography and got a Master from Accademia di Comunicazione in Milano in Art Direction. Her work is focused on outdoor, documentary and interior design photography. In the last few years she has been teaching photography storytelling classes and workshop around Italy. Irene’s work is aimed at capturing the relationship between men and nature, landscape and memory. Her work is featured in national and international catalogues, photography websites and magazines. She is mentioned by Gup Magazine and Fresh Eyes in the list of the 100 best emerging photographers in Europe in 2019. In 2020 she attends the course in curatorship for the contemporary image at FMAV, in Modena. From this experience the idea of creating curatorialmaps.com was born. [Official Website]
