It hurts me deeply…
Romina Bonomi

Romina Bonomi is a visual artist and poet born in Montevideo who came to ´ace for a sub30 Exploration Residency that culminated in the open studio on June 18, an afternoon when we opened the ´ace studio so that all the artists in residence during the May-June period could share their creative processes and the status of their projects with the local public. There, Romina exhibited her work It hurts me deeply to see that when you think, you cry.

Investigating self-absorption as a condition she recognizes in herself, her mother, and her close female friends, Romina analyzed songs from the 1970s from the River Plate region that portray strong women as solitary, thoughtful figures who no longer inhabit spaces of care, but rather their own inner worlds. These women are admired for their sadness, their ability to be alone, and their lack of enjoyment. These songs, although distant in time, name with disturbing precision a figure that Romina continues to see, even today. In order to give physical space to the self-absorbed woman, not as a muse but as a subject, the artist sat for an hour a day, for several days, writing automatically on a canvas. The process recorded on video has a dual function: documentary and symbolic. The resulting canvas, exhibited alongside a projection of the video of the process, does not present a finished work, but rather an existential condition in its purest form. Writing then becomes a way of naming what cannot be seen: turning her personal archive into a political act.