Into Your Solar Plexus is the sum of a multitude of journeys, people and stories collected and edited by Donatella Bernardi. Her uncle and father, respectively a mountaineer and a scientist, were meticulous documenters of their travels around the globe. Their archives constitute the driving force behind the project.
In the central part of the book, Bernardi takes over the Kunsthalle Bern for a number of months in 2015, in order to address the notion of political origin, personal mythology, necessity and contingency through art. The family archive is combined with other sources, such as works by the Lebanese artists Saloua Raouda Choucair and Hala Schoukair, mother and daughter, but also historical artworks from the Swiss Confederation Fine Art Collection. Bernardi conceives Into Your Solar Plexus as a permeable organism, a time-based curatorial journey as well as an artist’s book, the perception and interpretation of which were influenced by the natural and political catastrophes that took place during the implementation of the project, such as the earthquake in Nepal or the assault on the Palmyra archaeological site by ISIS militants.