Ninfa Atlas manifests a translation process that carries the human figure from historic archive through embodied performance to digital asset. Five large video screens, oriented vertically like a mobile phone, are inhabited by a figure performing on a virtual stage. The project takes as its starting point Mnemosyne Atlas (1924–1929), the image archive in which Aby Warburg identified recurring motifs in Western art and culture. The Ninfa (Italian for nymph) is the main protagonist of the Atlas, embodying the female figure-in-movement across cultures and time periods. Ninfa Atlas tracks the lives of these figures and their gestures as they adapt across technological eras, social contexts, and historical situations. The project highlights the complexities and problematics of cultural categorization and visual legibility.

Working from a 72-image score animating historical feminine figures mined from Warburg’s atlas, performers were invited to reflect, modify, contest, and invent gestures as a way to diversify and extend the archive. Short dance phrases were then enacted in a volumetric video capture studio and recomposited into 3D image assets. In a game engine, the figure-assets were re-filmed in the round by virtual cameras in a digital approximation of the capture studio and with generic filmic backdrops sourced from an online catalogue.

Five sections of bespoke printed wallpaper cover the north wall, each section composed of two-dimensional image maps, also called atlases, that picture the body flattened out and torn into sections, a violent gesture in the 3D asset construction process. The 20-page score is reproduced as a broadsheet newspaper edition available for visitors to take.