Romina Bonomi is an Uruguayan visual artist and poet born in Montevideo. She studied the International Baccalaureate for two years in New Mexico, USA, and is currently completing her BFA at Ringling College of Art and Design with a minor in Graphic Design.

During her time at ´ace, Romina worked on a project that delved into the notions of womanhood in relation to her inner world and the outer world in which she lives. Investigating self-absorption as a condition that Romina recognizes in herself, her mother, and close friends, she analyzed songs from the River Plate region of the 1970s—such as Mejor me voy by El Kinto or El amor y las palomas by Facundo Cabral—that portray strong women as solitary, thoughtful figures who no longer inhabit spaces of care, but rather their own inner worlds. These songs, although distant in time, name with disturbing precision a figure that the artist still sees today. In order to give physical space to the self-absorbed woman, not as a muse, but as a subject, Romina sat for an hour each day, several days, writing automatically on a canvas. Writing, because of its immediacy and honesty, is for her the most direct way to record that inner space—an inhospitable refuge. The process recorded on video had a dual function: documentary and symbolic. The cameras, in addition to documenting the process, also reinterpret the people, the comments, the shame, and the guilt that she carries with her and that condition even her most intimate thoughts.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I use text, painting, and performance to investigate how guilt and silence shape women’s inner lives. My work acts as a form of quiet resistance—recording thoughts that are usually hidden, forgotten, or suppressed. Through repetition, accumulation, and the physical act of writing, I give form to what women carry inside but rarely say out loud.