Jona Lepori (b. 1993) lives and works between Brione sopra Minusio and Lugano, Switzerland.

His practice unfolds as a perpetual archive of objects, images, marks and symbolic forms, bringing together sculpture, tattooing, garments, printed matter and found material.

Working primarily with wood, metal, ceramic, concrete and textiles, Lepori begins with material and proportion, allowing form to emerge through the process. Objects are constructed, altered or deprived of their original function through gestures that are often simple and irreversible. The archive grows through accumulation. Objects coexist with drawings, found images, texts, symbols and fragments from different times and contexts. They do not settle into separate bodies of work, but remain open to new relationships as the archive expands. Meaning accumulates rather than resolves.

Tattooing belongs to the same practice. Working on the body or on an object involves different materials and processes, but the attention to the mark and to the consequences of a gesture remains the same. Addition and removal become two poles of the same process of transformation.