BEA BONAFINI
Bea Bonafini is an interdisciplinary artist based between London and Barcelona. Through painting, tapestry, ceramics, and drawing, she explores the fluid boundaries between states of being. Her work exists in a constant state of flux, adapting to its context, mirroring the way identities are never fixed but continuously reshaped by experience, history, and place.
Bonafini’s practice crosses cultures, where symbols, materials, and traditions intermingle, dissolving rigid distinctions. Her works act as living surfaces—unstable, fragmentary, and in perpetual transformation—where images, gestures, and textures migrate, shedding their original meanings to reappear in new, unexpected forms. Through a process of layering and reconfiguration, she revives cross-cultural mythologies, allowing them to merge and dissolve into contemporary, personal narratives.
Shifting between monumental and intimate scales, her works become transient sanctuaries, protected spheres that act as receptacles for a lost spirituality. Strongly influenced by archaeology and literature, she constructs a space where histories, myths, and identities are continuously dismantled and reassembled, embracing the fluid nature of our shared existence.
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Bea Bonafini graduated from MA painting from the Royal College of Art in London (2016) and BA Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art in London (2014). She was artist-in-residence at the Art Explora Mediterranean Residency (2024) and the British School at Rome (2020); commissions include site-specific works for Manifesta 15 Barcelona, Spain (2024); ALA Prize, Italy (2023); Palazzo Abatellis, Italy (2022); Meta HQ, UK (2022); Maison Estelle, UK (2020); La Berlugane-Maleki residence, France (2019); and Jonköping Council, Sweden (2018).
Recent solo exhibitions: Luminescence, Renata Fabbri, Milan (2024); Acque Amare, ALA Art Foundation (2023); Il Chiostro Animato, Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Rome (2022); A Monstrous Fruit, Setareh, Berlin (2022); Animals Of Your Lips, Bosse & Baum, London (2022); Unearthly, Nosbaum Reding, Luxembourg (2022); Ghosts for a Post-Modern Tale, LAAA, Mexico City (2022); Luna Piena (Stomaco Vuoto), Renata Fabbri, Milan (2021); Sfiorare Fantasmi, Eduardo Secci, Florence (2021); Twin Waves, Operativa, Rome (2019); Chimère, Chloe Salgado, Paris (2018); Shed Shreds, Lychee One, London (2018); and Dovetail’s Nest, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2017).
Recent group exhibitions: Manifesta 15, Barcelona (2024); Diario Notturno, MAXXI, L’Aquila (2023); Italian Painting Today, Triennale Milano (2023); Imagina, Biennale di Gubbio (2023); Horizon of the Void, Artocène, Chamonix (2023); Coppa di Stelle nel Cerchio del Sole, Palazzo Abatellis Museum, Palermo (2022); Fondazione per l’Arte, Rome (2022); Kristen Hjellegjerde, London (2022); The Artsy Vanguard Fourth Edition, Miami (2021); Fondazione Sandretto, Guarene (2020); Premio Cairo, Palazzo Reale Milan (2019); and Memories Arrested in Space, The Italian Cultural Institute, London (2018).
EDUCATION
2016 Royal College of Art - MA Painting
2014 Slade School of Fine Art, UCL - BA Fine Art
2010 Chelsea College of Art & Design, UAL - Foundation in Art & Design Diploma
2010 Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Art - with Liliana Moro.
2008 Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Art - with Li Songsong.