At first glance Carry On is a staged work on fear of flying.
In depth with this series of images, I metaphorically confront concepts such as life, control and time through the idea of fear of flying : It is about that unease of not being in control of events in a world where everyone is constantly trying to be in control.
We carry-on our emotions with our hand luggage and into the airplane. We sit amidst strangers in a pause from reality, suspended in the atmosphere where attachment to life takes different contours and perspective twists to a deeper place.
As a photographer, my preferred environment takes place in the world of Fiction photography, a world that visually transforms, by clues, a real event into an artificial set capable of arousing emotions in the beholder.
Through a modern reinterpretation, Strangely Familiar illustrates the psychological portrait of Julia Pastrana, a woman relentlessly derided and gone down in history as the "bearded lady"; one of the most famous human freaks of the 19th century. Exploited by her husband, she was subject to numerous shows, the most famous: "The Ugliest Woman In The World."
This project sparked after a real-life account in which I was subject to a temporary bells-palsy (paralysis of the nerve that supplies the facial muscles on one side of the face, making a face appear to droop). From this personal situation and new perceptions deriving from people's attitudes when staring with embarrassment at my asymmetrical face, my imagination went beyond myself. Pastrana's story reinforces and challenges the lines between the self and other, human and non-human, ordinary and extraordinary. Such spectacles rely upon suggesting how discursive systems, such as normativity and humanness, intertwine in the social practices that constitute them. Using a silicon mask inspired by her appearance I directed the focus on themes such as stigma, prejudice, voyeurism, isolation, and the Freudian Uncanny, which gives life to an eerie state of conflict and draws the viewer into a psychic territory of disturbance. My personal experience acted as the trigger for my deep considerations of human behavior over the centuries. It inspired me to shine a light in that darkness, making the concept of opportunity injustice habitable for reflection.
