Lorenzo Bordonaro

My name is Lorenzo, I am half Italian half Portuguese. Last year, after a long lifechanging trip to South America, I settled down in a tiny hamlet in the Italian Alps, in Val di Susa, called Celle. Celle in Italian means ‘cells’ – it refers to the fact that this place has been used as place of hermitage by friars and mystics since year 1000 AD at least.

Here I meditate daily, and I paint the extraordinary nature that surrounds me. Witnessing the slow change of seasons, the passing of clouds, the fly of the buzzards, the dragonflies in summer.

My works are not only about portraying nature as a subject, but about entering into a state of presence with it—translating its rhythms, silences, and textures through gestures that are spontaneous and unfiltered. My hand moves without calculation, following an instinct that feels older than thought, closer to breath. It is a process akin to the spirit of Japanese Zen painting, where the act itself becomes a form of meditation—one that seeks not to capture, but to commune.

In these moments, the boundary between the inner landscape and the outer one begins to dissolve. Drawing and painting become a way of being in the world—not as an observer, but as a participant in its quiet unfolding.

BA + MA Cultural Anthropology (University of Torino, Italy)
PhD Cultural Anthropology (Lisbon University)
BA Painting & Drawing (ArCo Lisbon)
MA Sculpture (FBAUL, Lisbon)

Solo shows and projects

2019 A Home Made by Drawing, B#S Gallery, Treviso, Italy.
2019 Omi i kus’é, um pedra? FCSH Universidade Nova, Lisbon.
2018 Sobreposições / Galeria da Biblioteca UTAD / Vila Real / Portugal
2017 If you dig you always find the sea at the end / Manifesta 12 (waiting for Manifesta programme) / Palermo / Italy
2016 Crash / Dimora OZ / Palermo / Italy
2013 The keycutter house (Casa das Chaves) / Mouraria Neighbourhood / Lisbon / Portugal
2012 Ghetto Six / 6 de Maio Neighborhood / Amadora / Portugal
2012. Somos nós, Calabacera, Praia, Cabo Verde

Group shows (latest)

2019 A Vida é um Emaranhado de Nós, ZET Gallery, Braga, Portugal
2019 I Bienal da Fábrica. Fábrica Braço de Prata, Lisbon, Portugal.
2019 Premio SGPCM-FBAUL, Lisboa, Portugal
2019 Public # Intimacy, B#S Gallery, Treviso, Italy.
2019 Materia Suoni Visioni, B#S Gallery, Treviso, Italy.
2018 Materia Suoni Visioni Fondazione Cá Foscari, Venezia, Italy.
2018 Ruins / Decadenza e Rovina, Castello di Duino, Duino, Italy
2018 Vanitas # Memento Mori, Palazzo Ducale, Genova, Italy
2018 18th IUAES (International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences) World Congress, Photo Exhibition, Florianópolis, Brazil.
2018 DIN A4, BBK Osnabrück, Osnabrück, G...