“Disobedience is the transversal of mirages,
a manner of lightheartedly breaking bonds,
because one has agreed to lose everything, including life.”

– Anne Dufourmantelle, In Praise of Risk (2011)

In the darkroom, Mexican artist Fabiola Menchelli (born 1983) transforms light from source to raw material. Working in complete darkness without the aid of a “safelight,” she folds, unfolds, exposes, develops, and sometimes solarizes vivid, abstract color photograms. There is no camera and there are no negatives. Rather, she relies upon touch, sound, and color theory to make each work with the movements of her own body. There is also physical risk: working with color in the darkroom is demanding and unforgiving, requiring special safety gear and a reorientation of the body and mind. The results are atmospheric and ethereal, liquid and often unmeasured. They are at once photographs, paintings, and sculptures—and the process of making is recorded directly onto the surface of the paper.

Considering Menchelli works blindly, encounters with risk, chance, and error are central to her practice. Historically, the photographic medium has been both praised and constrained by its capacity for technical precision: framing, composition, focus, defined light and shadow, all further calibrated in darkroom processing. Menchelli’s photograms push against this tradition, requiring a physical presence and exchange between her body and the photographic paper that goes beyond the two-dimensional frame. Rather than operate a camera to capture the world, she enacts disobedience, to allow for other ways of understanding existence from feminist perspectives. She trusts her own intuition and muscle memory, embracing uncertainty as a radical act of unlearning.

The Norton is honored to welcome Menchelli as our 2024-25 Mary Lucille Dauray Artist-in-Residence. certain silence marks her first solo museum exhibition.

All works courtesy of the artist, Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo, and Marshall Gallery, unless otherwise noted.

Lauren Richman, Ph.D.
William and Sarah Ross Soter Curator of Photography
Organized by the Norton Museum of Art. Support for this exhibition was provided by the William and Sarah Ross Soter Photography Fund.

Thank you to Lauren Richman for her incredible kindness, trust, and support in making this show. Thank you to Rachel Gustafson, Pam Parry, Victoria Pesta, Sarah Bass, Carlos R. Faure Maurás, Ashley Kerr, Scott Simmons, Erin Ammon, Arthur Salazar, Lorraine Bond, Glenn Tomlinson, and everyone at the Norton Museum of Art. Thank you to my team at FocoLab. My deepest gratitude to Priscila Vanneuville, Laura Orozco, Beatriz Diaz, Miguel Angel Ortega, Melvin Lara, Leslie Moody-Castro, Andrea Manuel, Andrea Martinez, Andrea Chapela, Jess Perlitz, Bean Gilsdorf, Artemio, Douglas Marshall, and Gustavo Arróniz. To Blaz and all my family with love.