The Art of Storytelling, photography by Laura Bonnefous

Not only are the words that we choose to use important to the craft of storytelling, but so are the pictures that we conjure up. Laura Bonnefous uses her work to investigate the ability of photography to piece together a narrative in a piecemeal fashion. She offers a certain poetry of reality through the way that she approaches her artistic practice by concentrating on the environments that she explores and recreates. She is captivated by the changes that our culture has undergone and finds inspiration in the relationships that modern humans have with the contemporary landscape. She researches our mythologies in order to present a nuanced vision, and then she recreates her own spaces, which are more metaphorical and personal. Her images are both pictorial and sculptural, and through a certain level of abstraction, they engage in a new archaeology of the codes that govern our contemporary world.

Failles and Kilamba are both noteworthy collections that she has created. The work of Failles investigates the boundaries of the landscape, drawing out its contours and re-creating its forms. The collection is an involuntary investigation of the Japanese island of Kyushu, which is in a region that is in a state of constant transition between eruption and calm. Through the use of Failles, a conversation is initiated between the bodies, forms, and colors of these spaces, which are at the same time quite stable and highly fragile. The creations take on an organic quality, and the regions take on a persona of their own, ushering us into a sensorial narrative that fuses the features of both people and places.

Kilamba, on the other hand, is an investigation of a region through the use of color, the decoding of architectural structures, portraits of geopolitical figures, and the creation of a new space. Bonnefous was motivated to create his work by the fact that the city of Kilamba in Angola exists. Kilamba is rooted in a geopolitical history and is at the center of current issues, but at the same time, it is so uniquely constructed and has such a unique relationship to color. Through the lens of her artistic practice, she had the desire to investigate and reimagine the relationship between China and Africa. The series is positioned between an instinctive archaeology of the territory through color, light, and forms and a set of portraits that echo it in some way. Kilamba is a sensitive and pictorial metaphor for a facet of the modern world that we live in.

These collections provide art collectors with a one-of-a-kind and potent means of storytelling that can be displayed in their own homes. They have the ability to stimulate a sense of introspection and exploration, thereby establishing a connection of force that changes a thing into an emotion. These collections provide a glimpse into the complexity of our contemporary codes and emotions, whether it be through Failles' dialogue between bodies, forms, and colors or through Kilamba's instinctive archaeology of the territory through color, light, and forms. Both of these collections can be found on the website. Those who come into contact with them will have a one-of-a-kind and potent encounter with the art of storytelling because they can be arranged in a room to serve either as a standalone statement or as a component of a more comprehensive story.