Fabiola Menchelli Brings Unique Photography to Norton Museum

The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach will host artist Fabiola Menchelli’s first solo museum show in the United States, certain silence, from this Saturday, December 7 through March 23, 2025.

Menchelli’s work engages with photography’s materiality, and the works showcased in the exhibition will consider a range of conceptual theories, including visual perception, the relationship between viewer and artwork, the language of abstraction, poetry and more.

Comprising more than 20 works, including a selection of previously unseen pieces, her atmospheric photographs test the limits of perception as she folds, exposes, and develops images that may appear straightforward but contain complexities brought forth by chance and accident, all created without a camera or negatives.

The exhibition’s final month coincides with Menchelli’s tenure next March as the Norton’s Mary Lucille Dauray 2025 Artist-in-Residence, when she will engage with the West Palm Beach community for a slate of public programming.

“Menchelli’s unique approach to photography engages a sense of wonder and discovery, and it is an honor to host her debut museum exhibition and award her the Mary Lucille Dauray 2025 Artist in Residence,” said Ghislain d’Humières, Kenneth C. Griffin Director and CEO of the Norton Museum. “When viewing certain silence, audiences should allow themselves to be physically and emotionally transported by Menchelli’s work; for a few moments, the metaphysical nature of light, color, and sculptural form may wash over the concerns of everyday life.”

Through abstraction, Menchelli’s work engages in conversation with the history of photography and pushes the limits of the medium through her experimental, camera- less creative approach. Her photographs are visually all-consuming, both atmospheric and ethereal, powerful and focused, and her artistic process involves a keen understanding of guiding light, the essential practice of photography. Menchelli has spent her career investigating theories on light, color and perception, including how to master light-sensitive chemistry in the color darkroom, an often-unforgiving place.

The artist creates these colorful, abstract, and sculptural photographs without the use of negatives or a camera, both pointing out and acting against the norms of the medium. To do so, she must work in complete blindness in her color darkroom, guided by touch, memory, and sound. She has created a coding system for each transparent color gel, so she knows exactly what she is picking up to insert into the photographic enlarger, which acts as her only light source. Though her process is highly complex, the artist prefers that viewers approach each work with their own reference points to create an experience that is completely singular to them.

“For me, the darkroom is not just a room in my studio, it’s more like a state of mind, a meditative space where I can stop thinking logically and make images via a negotiation of movements and exposures between the paper and my body,” Menchelli said. “The process of making this work is laborious; it becomes a physical way of locating meaning that requires a reorientation of my body. All other senses compensate for the lack of vision, creating a sense of deep concentration. It feels like a kind of ritual that requires a calm and steady flow in order to deal with the unexpected.”

The exhibition, certain silence, was curated by Lauren Richman, William and Sarah Ross Soter Curator of Photography at the Norton Museum of Art.

“I hope visitors take away a new awareness and recognition of experimental photography that the medium is not simply upheld by its representational and reproducible qualities, but also its capacity for the unexpected and unknown. Light transforms from tool to material in Menchelli’s work, and beauty is expressed through her embrace of chance and accident,” Richman said.

Visit norton.org for more info.