Ethical Manifesto of Julia Bornefeld

Ambivalences

We are aware that

“Our body is a loan inhabited by our spirit for a certain period of time. Our stay on earth is limited in time”

(J.B.);

man tends to prefer the body, and therefore materiality, at the expense of the true value that everyone has: the soul;

man is the seat of the eternal conflict between soul and body; ambivalence that requires a stable balance for survival and which, however, today, is intended to satisfy the second;

today’s frenetic, materialistic society distracts attention from what is most important, namely the person and his singularity, in favor of a “rapid and superficial commodification” of man himself and the environment in which he is placed;

the individual has been deprived of his value and his subjectivity by a system that puts everything and the interests of the masses in the center and in the forefront of the single human being;

the diversity of each individual has been reduced to a bare minimum and simplified: a flashy example is the feminine figure, often stigmatized and downgraded into an image, wilfully emptied of her own personality to follow the dictates of the consumer society.

We believe that

Man must re-acquire the consciousness of self and awareness of the society in which he is immersed, which “points to the rapid and superficial commodification” of the human being, of the environment and of culture;

the human body is only the shell of the soul and that it is the means to enrich it;

Man must find a balance that allows him to nourish his own soul, but without neglecting its temple: the body, fundamental to his own prosperity;

excessive concern for material goods inevitably causes unhappiness and the soul does not feed upon them, but of those values that this society linked to expenditure causes to forget;

the individual should not dissolve in the group, but he is himself an integral and fundamental part of the survival of the latter;

the happiness of material goods is ephemeral and fleeting, as opposed to the enrichment of the soul due to interpersonal exchanges and the critical spirit, which is intended to last in time;

singularity is to be re-evaluated and appreciated, valorizing diversity as a means of improving the community;

we need to focus on what enriches the soul: art, culture and education;

through art, one can study and analyze the relationships between human beings and ordinary situations with detachment, so that one can consider them objectively and find their strengths and weaknesses.

We want to act

Through art and an ironic attitude to describe our society, disrupting everyday life and overturning

traditional ways of thinking;

Through common familiar objects and installations, synthesized to fetish, to focus attention on the first meaning of certain forgotten values to make the spectator think, in his own individuality, that, as a passive observer, regains his critical spirit and a primary and engaged role in his acting in the world;

Through performance, photography and painting to provoke and awake man from his state of torpor, induced by a society that places the commercial interest of the masses in the first place and flattens individual thinking, insidiously imposing preset and prepackaged criteria and ways of thinking.

ARTantide.com and Julia Bornefeld intend to collaborate on a common artistic project with the aim

of valorizing the ambivalence, differences and the right of man to be happy in spite of the obstacles that

nature and often other humans place in his way.

Last Museal Projects

2024 | Nemo Propheta in Patria-Metamorphic Scream, Biennale di Venezia, Venezia, Italy

2023 | Biennale Le Latitudini dell'Arte, Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin, Germany

2023 | Milk, Wellcome collection, London, United Kingdom

2022 | Alem da Etica, Museo "De Arte de Blumenau", Blumenau, Brasil

2022 | RE GENESIS, Oltre le Tenebre, Diocesan Museum of Vicenza

2020 | ARTEOLOGIA - Oltre l'Etica, Archeological Museum of Vicenza (Italy)

2019 | Oltre l'Etica, Paranaense Museum, 14th International Biennale of Curitiba (Brasil)

2019| MORPHIC FIELDS, Fortress, Franzensfest (I)

2018 | ARTEOLOGIA, National Archeological Museum of Venice