Titolo: Woodland
Type: photographic project commissioned Artist in Residence at Italian Culture Istitutute (ICI) in London
Technique: model, make up, body painting, bonsai, rose petals, flowers, zip, fashion
Year: 2003-2005
In 2002 I won The Artist in Residence Award at the Italian Cultural Institute through which I was invited to exhibit my creations during the 2002 London Fashion Week. The project, which was devised specifically for this exhibition, focused on the theme of GMOs, genetically modified organisms, which I wanted to treat within the context of fashion photography, using make-up artists, stylists, hairdressers, models and fashion designers.
Since its inception, the project was intended to create a collaboration between Italian and British designers. Many famous names in fashion joined in, supplying accessories, jewellery and clothes: from Vivienne Westwood (with whom I had the opportunity to collaborate even afterwards) to Giorgio Armani, from Dolce & Gabbana to Alexander McQueen.
The images from a formal point of view are built on rigorous symmetries and through the technique of collaging the metal grafts and floral elements, which are glued onto the model's face, the canvas on which my vision took shape. In the search for formal perfection, however, I always deliberately inserted an anomaly, an element codified as “wrong,” wrong that conveys the need to change the conception of women in fashion through a conceptual bug and pushes the user to rethink the antithesis of the stereotypes in which it is confined.
The faces of my models never betray pain: the reaction that comes from the metallic intrusion that penetrates the flesh is a reflected emotion, delegated to the spectator. Woodland’s creatures are genetically modified, they were born this way, they cannot feel pain.
In short, I can say that this work represents an encounter between my Italian education - with the search for formal perfection - and British artistic influences, among which it is necessary to mention the references to Punk culture, which is an important piece in the complex imaginary from which not only my works of this period spring, but which remains the basis of all my work in the following years. A vision that for the first time in Woodland is defined in a precise language, the same one that will then make all my work recognisable. In this sense, I can say that Woodland represents a watershed in my career and in my artistic path. It can be considered as my Manifesto.