Extreme bodies

Extreme Bodies is personal project of mine, entirely based on the emotional study of looking, liking, recognising and accepting one’s self when seeing our own reflection.

It’s a personal view on the “perfect body” stereotype through which we try to compensate for our own psychological insecurities.

We idolise our bodies, but we’re also able to destroy it, and we achieve both of those actions through mechanisms that stem from our poor understanding of our true selves and from not recognising our real essence!

We are spirit, energy, but we are first and foremost minds, all wrapped into a shell of skin, nerves, muscles and bones. It’s our means of transport, whose engine is often only conditioned by deep insecurities and outside influence.

The exhibition is divided into sections and these are its themes:

Section 1: Accepting and empowering one’s spirit through acceptance

I greatly admire those left crippled by a tragic event and yet have managed to be acceptant of their prosthetics, turning this “weakness” into a source of strength. turning this “weakness” into a source of strength. Whilst looking at these people’s faces, some famous, some not, I recognised in their eyes a kind of pride on a par with that of warriors and mythological characters.

Therefore, I portrayed four different characters on medium and large canvases with their prosthetics shown as jewels, making them legends, my legends!

I portrayed a woman as a Phoenix. Then I portrayed as Pheidippides a soldier who lost his arm and a leg defusing bombs in Afghanistan. A little American girl named Polly who lost a leg and whose grandma died after being run over by a bus became my Atalanta (from the Greek Atalante, which means balance)

Section 2 : My Body, “A Temple not prayed in enough”

Through different installations I’ll tell the story of my body. A body that over the course of time has changed due to serious health issues that I, for one, have exasperated because I attributed so much power to my illness that my external appearance came second place, thinking it no longer had a right to exist. I only gave my inner-self importance, thinking that seen as I had been diagnosed with health issues, I could only rely on my inner essence. After working hard on my inner self, I came to understand this “perfect machine”, and trying to save it from the inside made me really come back to life.

Section 3: Loving and Recognising Yourself

Section 3 is an interactive room in which I’d like to stream a selection of pictures depicting segments of my life and the lives and bodies of those I love, know and meet:

people who speak their own personal language through their bodies. A sort of Kinesics through my own eyes.

Section 4: Live Symbols

You can see me through my infinite series of sketches, my sculptures and my never-ending, life long study of symbols and my deep knowledge of how colours work. You’ll see what an artist feels about the importance of geometric symbols and colour within themselves, what it’s like to feel and recognise yourself through these things whilst looking in the mirror.