Valentina Murabito – La Donna del Mare

The Italian-German artist Valentina Murabito (*1981, Giarre, Italy) presents her latest works in the exhibition La donna del mare. In these works, the artist approaches nature, mythology, and literary sources instinctively and playfully.

The title of the exhibition and its central work are borrowed from the 1888 play The Lady from the Sea (Fruen fra havet) by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen tells the story of Ellida, a woman torn between a longing for freedom and a sense of duty. Ultimately, she follows her instincts and leaves her husband for a sailor because he smells of the sea. In Murabito’s interpretation, a woman stands on a rock by the sea, her arms outstretched as if about to take flight with large wings made of bird-of-paradise flower petals (also known as Strelitzia).

In another work, Murabito depicts the mythological figure of a faun playing a flute that, upon closer inspection, transforms into a long zucchini. References to Greek myths frequently appear in her monochromatic photo-sculptures.

For over twenty years, Murabito has been experimenting in her studio with an elaborate photographic technique in which she exposes various materials—such as wood, steel, and concrete—stretching and distorting image surfaces. This process results in three-dimensional artworks. In the darkroom, she creates analog photographs of imaginative creatures captured in various historical locations. Her work blends fiction and reality, ancient mythologies and political philosophy, as well as art and biopolitics. She breaks with conventional forms of representation, blurs the boundaries between painting and sculpture, and delves deeply into the medium of photography.

Her analog images are produced over months through a complex process reminiscent of early photography pioneers such as Eadweard Muybridge. The production of this body of work was supported by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Valentina Murabito, born in 1981 in Giarre, Italy, studied at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, Hungary, and at the Academy of Fine Art in Catania, Italy. Now based in Berlin, her work revolves around the creation of “in-between creatures”—hybrid figures that transcend traditional categories, blending man and woman, human and animal. Her experimental approach to analog photography involves manipulating photographic surfaces, dissolving them to resemble skin or cracking them like dry earth, thereby challenging conventional ideas of gender and identity.

In addition to her artistic practice, Murabito has pursued academic research and has given lectures at the University of Florence through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Her work has been presented in numerous international exhibitions and is represented in prominent collections, including the SpallArt Collection in Salzburg, Austria.