Tag: society

The Androemoticon State

I came across Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo's painting "The Fourth State" a few times in my life as part of my Art History studies, and though it is regarded as one of the most iconic paintings of the twentieth century, I never quite felt much appreciation for it despite its social meaning and craft. Nevertheless, I found a high-res scan of it on the web and stored it for "a rainy day kind of thing". In 2016, after having resisted the impulse to purchase a smart phone for years, mainly in fear of becoming one of so many Izombies you see everywhere, I finally buckled…

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Catch your Fire

Do you remember the ALS IBC or wait ALS The Ice Bucket Challenge? Whereby, celebrities and politicians started recording themselves whilst throwing buckets of ice water over their heads, which in turn spurred thousands or maybe even millions of people to join in the party to raise awareness of ALS or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and more importantly money to carefully selected charities who study and research this motor neuron degenerative disease in order to find a cure. Well, I personally thought it spelled out S-C-A-M from the word go. A mind control scheme including the potential fifteen minutes of fame syndrome most of us suffer…

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Handjobs

I had this idea back in college to somehow create a visual hand gestures vocabulary to describe the many hand signs and symbology of Italian culture. I had originally wanted to make small etchings, however aside from a few ink pen sketches it never took off and instead I extended the theme to be included in my "IncontriirtnocS" series: Twenty-three life-size portraits - charcoal on raw loose canvas - of friends captured in different body positions suggesting postural communication typical of Italian culture, which ended up being the fulcrum of my graduation thesis. A few years passed, yet once ideas are seeded they keep on…

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AlieNation

Since I can remember I've always felt like an alien. Growing up with parents from two distinctively different cultures can do that to you. There was a time during my teenage years where I often felt out of place. I didn't feel neither fish nor fowl, so to speak. If I was in the UK people would say: "ah OK so you're Italian then! ". In Italy it was: "eh you are so British! ". It's all pretty harmless criticism, but my sensitivity was deeply attuned to certain feelings of alienation already, so little things like this forced me to deal with it and make…

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