DIS/turbed_portrait01

Domenico Barra

Digital Art - Pixels on screen

This morning while shopping at a supermarket I came across a miraculous product that is supposed to eliminate skin imperfections from our face, as if the only possible and acceptable face is the one without its own unique and imperfect skin. This strive for perfection has become an obsession, something very serious that is often approached too lightly but there is nothing more terrible than sponsoring perfect bodies, or rather perfect images of bodies, making beauty something exclusive. The body becomes a limit, a paralysis, we live because we have a body, imperfect as it may be, and this is denied to us because it is not perfect, it does not correspond to a formula, to a code of social integration. The imperfect body is rejected and sacrificed to universal beauty. Total Chaos, far from the classical praise of beauty as harmony. Society therefore looks at the imperfect body with suspicion, denies it, isolates it, filter it out. This generates so much discomfort to the point of pushing many to commit atrocious acts towards their own body. The reflection of our body in the distorting mirror of society destroys us, we do not accept it, we do not live it. So we exaggerate in the various attempts to make our body perfect, often even deforming its anatomy, this becomes a disease. To this exaggeration of beauty I am proposing a representation of the body that goes against the mainstream narration and rapresentation. In my works I exaggerate the deformed body, the disfigured face, imperfection as redemption, an act of protest against the filtered skin and sterilized bodies, the denigration of their own imperfections, of their own nature. Physical imperfection seen as a disease is highly toxic as a culture of beauty. The worst thing is that the search for perfection is subjected to models that influence the perception of the body from the outside, it does not come from within, we do not imagine a new body, we just want to appear as it is considered acceptable, beautiful, to live well, often a mean for career and success. Complex topic, but current and extremely essential because we are losing agency on our body.