"I make my mother’s body and my own body disappear in order to build myself a new one."
Artist: Eli Apezteguia
Project: Returning Body
"Returning Body explores the relationship I have with my body. It is an intuitive journey from denying the body to disidentifying with it. I make my mother’s body and my own body disappear in order to build myself a new one. I’m exploring how I relate to the idea I have of my body in an organic way. I stare at myself and I use self-portrait as a way of getting closer to myself. Looking for the reason why I reject the physical, I find that my mother’s relationship with her body influences mine. I see an invisible inheritance when it comes to the treatment of the body, especially as a woman. I play with the images and, as I reject the appearance of my body, I will also reject the image through aggression and intervention. Tired of the image and following my intuition, I begin to explore materiality and ask my mother to sculpt me in plaster."
"Following my working method of making and then revising, I realize that my project has been very mental. I’ve been referring to the idea I have of the body, which is not tangible, and I feel that this idea is exhausted. I begin to explore the material side of the body in a performative way. And without realizing it, as if it were a conclusion, I feel that the sculpture completes the journey: from black to white, from inside to outside, from mind to matter, from rejection to embrace, from the idea of the body to the body itself."
© Eli Apezteguia
Editor: Kiko