I am very pleased to announce the launch of my book “SOMEONE TO LOVE, the Self-Portrait Experience”, by The Private Space Books in Barcelona.
Someone To Love, is a double book by Cristina Nuñez. The first book contains the author’s visual autobiography through her self-portraits, family
pictures and text: an emotional narrative of the artist’s intense life, since her family history and her childhood, her troubled adolescence
as a heroin addict, her moving to Italy and the evolution of her self-image, her relationships to her partners and daughters, the discovery of the self-portrait as a tool for self-therapy and what she
calls her “mission”: divulging The Self-Portrait Experience to transform human suffering into art. The second book focuses entirely on
the method, a self-portrait manual to explore all aspects of one’s life, to stimulate the creative process and to empower oneself. It includes theory, many different exercises and numerous images from her workshop participants.
Cristina Núñez started working on the self-portrait in 1988, after five years of heroin addiction, as a sort of intense inner search and a need to express inadequacy and difficult emotions. She uses her own method, The Self-Portrait Experience, to
explore her identity and relationships, and to initiate a dialogue
between our thinking mind and our “guts”. Nuñez teaches her method in
prisons, mental health centres, art academies, companies and schools.
Her main goal is social activism: she intends to divulgate it
globally, to use it with different people around the world to better
understand the human condition. Her more than 1000 collaborative
self-portraits have stimulated a philosophical and anthropological study
related to the creative process, which has been published in the
academic press in Italy and UK.
– 2 books, format 23x23cm
– Paperback with sleeve
– 400 pages
– 475 illustrations (404 colour photographs, 59 B/W photographs, 12 drawings)
Index:
BOOK 1: the artist’s autobiography
– Roots
– About being seen
– 22 years of self-portraits
– Back to the roots
BOOK 2: The Self-Portrait Experience: Nuñez’s self-portrait method
– “As if one could see oneself”, foreword by Prof. Del Loewenthal, University of Roehampton, London.
–
“The photographic self-portrait as psychological investigation”,
foreword by Prof. Stefano Ferrari, University of Bologna.
The method
– The self-portrait as self-therapy, by Cristina Nuñez
– Methodology
– Part one: ME (emotions, character, body, place, etc)
– Part two: ME AND THE OTHER (relationship
– Part three: ME AND THE WORLD
– Criteria for the perception and choice of the works
– Building the self-portrait project
– Projects
Appendix
– Corporate work
– San Vittore, The Self-portrait Experience in Milan’s prison
– Waiting for Charon, The Self-Portrait Experience for people with terminal AIDS
– Higher Self, the art project, with an essay by curator Daniele De Luigi
Cristina Nuñez’s biography
Acknowledgements
2010 has been a great year up to now. My moving back to my hometown
Barcelona seems to have brought me very good luck! First of all, the
publication of my book and my encounter with the wonderful people at The
Private Space in Barcelona, a very innovative art gallery, high quality
printer and art book publisher (they are brand new, but they are
launching fantastic projects: see in their website Diego Mallo’s
exhibit, now at the gallery in Gracia, and Angela Bonadies’ beautiful
book “Las Personas y Las Cosas”). Secondly, The Private Space have hired
me to hold a workshop for women, just after the presentation of my
book: November 5-6-7. Individual self-portrait sessions of 45 minutes
each. The result of this workshop will be immediately printed and hanged
on the gallery walls: Higher Self, opening November 11. And thirdly, I
have just got financing for my prison project in Barcelona, for women at
Brians 1, thanks to La Caixa Obra Social: I’ll be working in prison for
four weeks in November, December 2010 and January 2011.