Sofia Masini

I’ve always been fascinated by our relationship with the earth, how our current connection to the environment shifts and changes and how our individual bonds differ and align. This fascination has grown greatly in response to the impending climate crisis, continuous government inaction, constant corporate greenwashing, and an ever growing feeling of disconnection from the earth, all of which I’m sure most of us feel and respond to.

It seems that our relationship with nature only exists in polarised forms, either as a series of resource based transactions which actively harm our environment, or as a driver of activism which can lack concrete outcomes or meaning. Sofia Masini’s book The body is a revelation as is landscape, confronts these polarised responses by reimagining the relationship between our bodies and the earth.

The body is a revelation as is landscape presents an alternative form of connection to the environment, a bond which does not seek to change our landscape but be changed by it. Through images of her torn, crumpled and cut body, Masini responds and reacts to correlating landscapes. Her figure grows, morphs and decays, ebbing and flowing across the pages in a state of constant fluidity. Masini places her body – and in extension the reader’s own – at the centre of change, not as a vessel that seeks to reshape their surroundings but as one that is altered alongside it.

I usually enjoy artists that use collage, particularly those that provide social or cultural criticism. The medium’s ability to recontextualise fragments of our personal and collective history is incredibly attractive, both to artists and viewers. Yet I find that many artists seem to focus solely on the end result of this process, and what their recontextualised fragments ‘say’ when they’re in their final arrangement, rather than the process of collage itself.

Masini’s collages celebrate the process through which her body and the landscape are changed. This process is introduced through the mixture of the landscape and body, which are presented as two separate forms. The empty landscape, captured through a series of rugged environments and barren architectural structures. Its form, both built and untouched, is established as an entity akin to the body in its ability to be shaped by our hands or the forces of the earth. Masini in turn responds to the landscape, collaging printed out images of her form, either posed within a studio or captured in the landscape. Her paper figure is dismantled, the fragments of her body collaged atop of each other and the structure of her figure is disregarded in favour of a more organic formation. Masini breaks apart the foundations of the body and land, laying rocks and limbs together where there is no superior or inferior. Through Masini’s collages the natural formations of our bodies and the earth are reformed into a flourishing state of symbiosis.

Through Masini’s collages the natural formations of our bodies and the earth are reformed into a flourishing state of symbiosis

The relationship between Masini’s body and the land is not confined to a singular connection. Their presence within each frame converges and separates, their continuous link developing through the book. The act of breaking apart her body and rearranging its printed form is an ongoing performance, her body’s fragmentation doesn’t seem to have a start or end, it is a cycle of decay and regrowth. The imperfections left by the process of collage enhance the sense of pliancy of our bodies and landscape. The shadows cast by the page’s edges, the frayed fibres, the overlapping asymmetry of cuts, all transform Masini’s relationship with the landscape from a static and rigid relationship to a shifting connection which constantly grows and develops. Her collages display the malleability of our bodies and the power of the landscape in its ability to shape us.

When I first looked through The body is a revelation as is landscape, I was unsure how I would approach writing about it. At first glance it appeared to be an incredibly personal piece of work, in which the reader could only ever witness the artist’s relationship with the earth. But Masini’s work is both personal and collective. Whilst the book features places I’ve never visited and people I’ve never met, the relationship which Masini establishes between her body and the earth isn’t completely unknown to me. It is a connection which I feel that we all share and desire, perhaps it’s a primordial response, for a bond between ourselves and the landscape which has long since been lost.

Masini establishes a connection which I feel that we all share and desire, perhaps it’s a primordial response, for a bond between ourselves and the landscape which has long since been lost.

At the beginning of this review, I said that Masini’s book reimagines our relationship with the environment. But perhaps reimagine is the wrong word to use. Masini’s book seeks to re-establish our relationship between our body and the earth. It’s not that the book proposes a new way of acting within the landscape; instead, it undoes a flawed way of thinking about our relationship with the land, and our dependence on it. The body is a revelation as is landscape is both a gentle presentation of a relationship between the body and the Earth, represented in a collection of rich landscapes and the dance of a body which rises and crumbles across the pages. Yet it is also a violent reminder of the raw power of nature and its ability to alter our forms, destroying the sinew which hold together our mind and body. The body is a revelation as is landscape reminds us of our relationship to the land and the flawed idea of our superiority over it, suggesting that we exist to endure and adapt to change, not to command it.