Wanna be my lover?
Mari Ornella
The Wanna be my lover? project is about self-discovery, and the search for a stable, certain identity. For the series, Mari experiments by examining herself in different roles and situations as a woman, revisiting her memories to understand how past experiences have shaped her. The project incorporates both utopian and dystopian elements to create a commentary on her own experiences, as well as on the broader social expectations placed on women throughout society – be it by parents, friends or peers. Where expectations are imposed on individuals from a young age, these pressures can either be embraced or rejected. For Mari, the purpose of the project is to reconfigure her relationship to the things that are expected of her – incorporating some into her own identity, and rejecting others without any accompanying trauma.
Ornella Mari is a Belgian-born, Hungarian-Italian photographer based in Budapest. She began working with photography in 2017 to explore her identity – particularly in terms of her relationship to femininity and womanhood. Mari’s work focuses on young women grappling with societal pressures, tackling themes such as trauma, emotion, gender inequality, and the unrealistic expectations to which women are often subjected.