Hierophany

The artistic work of the Italian, Federica Belli (winner of the BNL-BNP Paribas Photography Award in 2021 & the SKY Arts Master of Photography in 2018) underscores: presence.

In her exploration, Belli contemplated her Italian homeland to find, beyond plains and mountains, the ultimate limit: the water and its link to body fluids. After presenting the first solo exhibition of her career in  2023 at ALMANAQUE-fotográfica, her search now extends to the millennial cenotes of Mexico.

With a technical precision rooted in mathematics, chemistry and physics, the artist resumes an ancestral dialogue between the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, proposing new aesthetic bridges.

Her practice, based on analog-color-photography using exceptional development processes, involves; either submerging herself in the sea with large sheets of photographic film to expose them to moonlight, burying them, or exposing them to her own heat and bodily fluids; thus generating images whose depth seems to transcend the two-dimensionality of their physical support.

At the same time, Belli's photographic work reveals a connection that unveils the sacredness of water and fluids with the lunar. Like a perpetual falling drop, earth, water, and substances merge in material explorations of mystical colorimetry, resulting in an obsessive search for the liquid behavior on the skin of the world.

It seems that Belli's work transforms into a point of intersection between heaven, earth, and its center. Her photographs seduce and gestate allowing us to embrace, within the broadest of foundational myths, a captivating hierophany.

Alfonso Miranda, curator. 2026 | ALMANAQUE fotográfica | 2026

Federica Belli (Millesimo, Italy, 1998) is an artist, photographer and writer based in Paris. She is Bachelor in Economics from Bocconi University (Milan, Italy) and Contemporary Art and History of Photography at the École du Louvre (Paris, France).

In 2021, Belli won the BNP Paribas Photography Award and in 2018 the SKY Arts Master of Photography competition.

Belli’s oeuvre has been published globally inducting articles in Vogue Italy, Musée Magazine, Paris Photo Review, Lens Lecture, Il Giornale dell’Arte, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair.

Federica’s work has been exhibited at Paris Photo, Art Paris, Photo London, MIA Photo Fair, Art Miami and The Phair with the galleries Valeria Bella and Bildhalle; at the Digital Art Pavilion of the 2022 Venice Biennale, as well in a special exhibition at Bvlgari Via Condotti, in the foundational boutique of the brand in Rome, Italy.

ALMANAQUE fotográfica proudly presented Federica Belli’s first solo exhibition in the world: Accidentally Fund Out, curated by Arturo Delgado (2024); followed by her 2nd solo show Hierophany, curated by  Alfonso Miranda (2026). ALMANAQUE featured her work in its booth at Zona Maco Art Fair 2025 y 2026.

To make the photographic pieces exhibited in Hierophany, I worked camera-less: the photosensitive paper was immersed directly in the fluids of sea water, soil and my body at night.

The works in the first room result from the exposure of photo canvas to my flesh, the fluids that keep me alive, and the very ground in the fields around my artist studios in Paris and Florence. To obtain those in the second room, I immersed myself in the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico; as well as in the island of Paros in Greece.

For each work, what imprints the fluids on the paper making each of these analogue photographic productions possible, is the same subtle source of light that affects the ocean tides and, in a smaller scale, our emotional fluids: the moonlight.

Each time I build a provisional darkroom in-situ to develop and fix the works immediately after exposure. Only at this point I can see the result, letting go of all forms of control and relying on human intuition.

I work both as a fallible human observer and as a humble academic trying to verify the theories in physics, philosophy and consciousness that have fascinated me all along my research. Given that a premeditated  perfection is impossible, I embrace the uniqueness of each exposure.

What appears as an abstraction is actually a photographic trace of the fractal nature of the planet, the light of our satellite moon, and the metaphysics of a photosensitive paper developed over 200 years of chemical experimentation.

The development of this technique has been possible thanks to the unwavering support of my professional printer in Paris, Diamantino Quintas, outstanding analogue photography artist. I am pleased to present my second solo exhibition —curated with such a personal touch by Alfonso Miranda— at the gallery that Arturo Delgado founded in Mexico City, Mexico; a land which I admire and has deeply influenced my research and my views of life.

Federica Belli | Hierophany | ALMANAQUE fotográfica | 2026