THE EXPANDED IMAGE- Lori Pond & Ann Mitchell > First Place: Amadine Nabarra 'Bernoulli Equation 1'
First Place: Amadine Nabarra 'Bernoulli Equation 1'
Amandine Nabarra/Bernoulli Equation 1
First Place
First Place
Amandine Nabarra
Jurors Ann Mitchell & Lori Pond Review:
"We wish we could see this image in person, because its physicality implores the viewer to touch and interact with it.
Questions from Jurors:
"How did you originally come to use a sculptural approach for your work in general?
Amandine Nabarra: "I have always seen my work as an exchange with the viewer. When I had photography shows, I felt a quiet frustration. The audience was passive. They stood in front of the images, looked, and moved on. I kept wondering: what if the structure of a work could emphasize the concept itself? What if it was something people could hold and discover or walk through and feel?
That’s when I discovered artist books. A piece of art that can be physically shared. Something intimate. All the senses can be engaged.The experience becomes richer, more direct. It creates a different kind of connection; not just between the viewer and the work, but between people."
Jurors: "We were impressed by the structure of the work, can you tell us what this piece is about and how the structure supports that?"
Amandine Nabarra: "At the time, I was working with images of swimmers going through water slides. As I edited the photographs, I realized water was more than a subject. It is central to our existence. We are mostly water. We need it to survive.
There are many theories about existence; about layers of consciousness, about whether we share a common narrative. I began to wonder: if I translated a natural element like water into an object, would people from different cultures recognize it instinctively? Would they see water, even without being told?"
Jurors: "What was the development process? Did you try various methods, how does size and length play a part in this piece?"
Amandine Nabarra: "To explore that question, the structure had to behave like water. The images needed to float, to shift like waves, to slip through the hands. That is how I arrived at the scale of eighty-seven strips for the work.
I made many prototypes, testing the ideas in three dimensions. Bernoulli Equation took more than two years to complete. Cutting my photographs into strips did not come easily. I care deeply about composition. But once I began, it became surprisingly playful. I sewed the strips together so they overlap, keeping the image whole while allowing it to move. The structure is simple, but it lets the image shift and breathe."
Jurors: "Why do you choose to expand upon the traditional approach to Photography?"
Amandine Nabarra: "This book was my first step toward a more sculptural and ludic approach. Since then, I have continued to create other books with the same intention. Produced in limited editions, they have steadily sold out over the years.
Today, I create artist books, sculptures, and models for immersive installations I hope to realize in the near future. I’m interested in this evolution; in pushing the work beyond the flat image, into space, into the hands, into experience."
Artist Statement:
"I work at the intersection of art, science, and spirituality, using photography alongside paper-engineered books, sculptural forms, and immersive installations to reimagine how stories are carried and felt. Using physical structures as vessels for stories, I translate personal and collective inquiries into tactile, reflective works that are intimate, visceral, and deeply human."
Amandine Nabarra is a multidisciplinary artist whose work operates at the intersection of art, science, and spirituality. Working across photography, sculptural artist books, and immersive installations, she approaches each project as an open exploration, allowing ideas to determine their own materials, scale, and form. Her practice is not anchored to a fixed medium or method; instead, each work invents the conditions it requires in order to exist.
She works with paper in all its forms, natural and sculptural materials such as wood and clay, as well as metal, plexiglass, image, and text. Materials are chosen for their capacity to convey an idea through structure, weight, transparency, resistance, or fragility, rather than for stylistic continuity. Scale remains fluid, shifting from intimate, hand-held works to expansive spatial environments as each project demands. Meaning emerges through physical and perceptual experience.
Her work draws from scientific and natural systems; such as water, geological processes, memory, perception, and the cosmos; while remaining attentive to questions that extend beyond the measurable, toward the unknown. Rather than illustrating concepts, her projects create situations in which viewers encounter uncertainty and transformation through direct engagement.
She is currently developing Wild Act: Creativity, an artist book that investigates the creative process through modular wooden forms and printed booklets.
Nabarra’s artist books and and sculptural works are held in more than fifty public collections worldwide, including the Getty Research Institute, the Centre Pompidou, and numerous museum and university collections across multiple continents.
Alongside her studio practice, she is engaged in community-based work at Studio 526.
She lives and works in Los Angeles.
www.amandinenabarra.com
www.instagram.com/amandinenabarra/
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HOME: THE EXPANDED IMAGE
https://laphotocurator.com/the-expanded-image-lori-pond-ann-mitchell
FIRST PLACE
https://laphotocurator.com/the-expanded-image-lori-pond-ann-mitchell/first-place-amadine-nabarra-bernoulli-equation-1----/1E:
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
https://laphotocurator.com/the-expanded-image-lori-pond-ann-mitchell/honorable-mentions-james-wimberg-preferred-rewards-ellen-jantzen-transmutation-kathryn-dunlevie-detail-from-a-work-in-progress-kimberly-schneider-baked-hibiscus-aka-mixed-media-2-brooklyn-ny----/1
BEST SERIES:
https://laphotocurator.com/the-expanded-image-lori-pond-ann-mitchell/best-series-susan-kaufer-carey/1
EXHIBITION #1
https://laphotocurator.com/the-expanded-image-lori-pond-ann-mitchell/exhibition-1/1
EXHIBITION #2
https://laphotocurator.com/the-expanded-image-lori-pond-ann-mitchell/exhibition-2/1
EXHIBITION #3
https://laphotocurator.com/the-expanded-image-lori-pond-ann-mitchell/exhibition-3/1
Jurors Ann Mitchell & Lori Pond Review:
"We wish we could see this image in person, because its physicality implores the viewer to touch and interact with it.
It's a very mysterious image. It folds in on itself, spins around, and reminds me us of flowing water with all its blueness, twists and turns.
The only recognizable aspects of this image are the two hands that seem to float in a river of water. We love how our eyes are guided by the photo to flit and follow it as it fulfills its watery destiny."
Questions from Jurors:
"How did you originally come to use a sculptural approach for your work in general?
Amandine Nabarra: "I have always seen my work as an exchange with the viewer. When I had photography shows, I felt a quiet frustration. The audience was passive. They stood in front of the images, looked, and moved on. I kept wondering: what if the structure of a work could emphasize the concept itself? What if it was something people could hold and discover or walk through and feel?
That’s when I discovered artist books. A piece of art that can be physically shared. Something intimate. All the senses can be engaged.The experience becomes richer, more direct. It creates a different kind of connection; not just between the viewer and the work, but between people."
Jurors: "We were impressed by the structure of the work, can you tell us what this piece is about and how the structure supports that?"
Amandine Nabarra: "At the time, I was working with images of swimmers going through water slides. As I edited the photographs, I realized water was more than a subject. It is central to our existence. We are mostly water. We need it to survive.
There are many theories about existence; about layers of consciousness, about whether we share a common narrative. I began to wonder: if I translated a natural element like water into an object, would people from different cultures recognize it instinctively? Would they see water, even without being told?"
Jurors: "What was the development process? Did you try various methods, how does size and length play a part in this piece?"
Amandine Nabarra: "To explore that question, the structure had to behave like water. The images needed to float, to shift like waves, to slip through the hands. That is how I arrived at the scale of eighty-seven strips for the work.
I made many prototypes, testing the ideas in three dimensions. Bernoulli Equation took more than two years to complete. Cutting my photographs into strips did not come easily. I care deeply about composition. But once I began, it became surprisingly playful. I sewed the strips together so they overlap, keeping the image whole while allowing it to move. The structure is simple, but it lets the image shift and breathe."
Jurors: "Why do you choose to expand upon the traditional approach to Photography?"
Amandine Nabarra: "This book was my first step toward a more sculptural and ludic approach. Since then, I have continued to create other books with the same intention. Produced in limited editions, they have steadily sold out over the years.
Today, I create artist books, sculptures, and models for immersive installations I hope to realize in the near future. I’m interested in this evolution; in pushing the work beyond the flat image, into space, into the hands, into experience."
Artist Statement:
"I work at the intersection of art, science, and spirituality, using photography alongside paper-engineered books, sculptural forms, and immersive installations to reimagine how stories are carried and felt. Using physical structures as vessels for stories, I translate personal and collective inquiries into tactile, reflective works that are intimate, visceral, and deeply human."
Amandine Nabarra is a multidisciplinary artist whose work operates at the intersection of art, science, and spirituality. Working across photography, sculptural artist books, and immersive installations, she approaches each project as an open exploration, allowing ideas to determine their own materials, scale, and form. Her practice is not anchored to a fixed medium or method; instead, each work invents the conditions it requires in order to exist.
She works with paper in all its forms, natural and sculptural materials such as wood and clay, as well as metal, plexiglass, image, and text. Materials are chosen for their capacity to convey an idea through structure, weight, transparency, resistance, or fragility, rather than for stylistic continuity. Scale remains fluid, shifting from intimate, hand-held works to expansive spatial environments as each project demands. Meaning emerges through physical and perceptual experience.
Her work draws from scientific and natural systems; such as water, geological processes, memory, perception, and the cosmos; while remaining attentive to questions that extend beyond the measurable, toward the unknown. Rather than illustrating concepts, her projects create situations in which viewers encounter uncertainty and transformation through direct engagement.
She is currently developing Wild Act: Creativity, an artist book that investigates the creative process through modular wooden forms and printed booklets.
Nabarra’s artist books and and sculptural works are held in more than fifty public collections worldwide, including the Getty Research Institute, the Centre Pompidou, and numerous museum and university collections across multiple continents.
Alongside her studio practice, she is engaged in community-based work at Studio 526.
She lives and works in Los Angeles.
www.amandinenabarra.com
www.instagram.com/amandinenabarra/
----------------------------------
HOME: THE EXPANDED IMAGE
https://laphotocurator.com/the-expanded-image-lori-pond-ann-mitchell
FIRST PLACE
https://laphotocurator.com/the-expanded-image-lori-pond-ann-mitchell/first-place-amadine-nabarra-bernoulli-equation-1----/1E:
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
https://laphotocurator.com/the-expanded-image-lori-pond-ann-mitchell/honorable-mentions-james-wimberg-preferred-rewards-ellen-jantzen-transmutation-kathryn-dunlevie-detail-from-a-work-in-progress-kimberly-schneider-baked-hibiscus-aka-mixed-media-2-brooklyn-ny----/1
BEST SERIES:
https://laphotocurator.com/the-expanded-image-lori-pond-ann-mitchell/best-series-susan-kaufer-carey/1
EXHIBITION #1
https://laphotocurator.com/the-expanded-image-lori-pond-ann-mitchell/exhibition-1/1
EXHIBITION #2
https://laphotocurator.com/the-expanded-image-lori-pond-ann-mitchell/exhibition-2/1
EXHIBITION #3
https://laphotocurator.com/the-expanded-image-lori-pond-ann-mitchell/exhibition-3/1
