BREATHE IN BURN OUT - Dora Lionstone
BREATHE IN BURN OUT gathers 1,000 transformations of a single self-portrait, altered through collage, cutting, and mark-making.
The work began one year after a traumatic birth that left me temporarily paralyzed. In the aftermath of prolonged physical recovery and the relentless demands of care, the process became a way to explore the slow unmaking and reshaping of identity under the weight of burnout.
Each page presents twelve fragments at a time, allowing the grid to unfold slowly and rhythmically. On the reverse—photographed and reproduced in this book—traces of the process remain: pressure marks, bleed-throughs, tape, and ink stains. These backsides act as a secondary body, registering the residue of strain, repetition, and collapse. Together they form a visual language of burnout, bearing the imprints and scars left by trauma and sustained exhaustion.
As the viewer turns each page, they enter a rhythm of repetition and rupture, effort and exhaustion, disappearance and persistence. BREATHE IN BURN OUT resists linear narrative, unfolding instead as a layered meditation on a self undone and reassembled—again and again—within the quiet folds of care, collapse, and the uncertain, ongoing work of becoming, both artist and mother.
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Limited edition of 10 copies, signed and numbered.
Each book has been bound by hand.
The cover features a cutout grid and an inlay with the original selfportrait and a handwritten text on transparent paper.
| Size: | 20,2 x 29,3 cm |
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| Edition: | 10 |
| Binding: | Coptic binding |
| Printing: | Inkjet printing, Laser print |
| Place: | Amsterdam, NL |
| Year: | 2025 |
| Publisher: | SPROUT PUBLISH |