jessica selvi

Nowadays cosmetic surgery has become an increasingly more common practice. The rise of the last few years is mostly due to the Eastern countries, Seoul in particular, which has become one of the new pole of attraction and wealth across the world. According to the statistics, the highest rate of surgical operations can be detected here. Most of the youth as the older people have gone through at least one operation already during the adolescence. However, along with the globalization process, a sort of obsession has been developed toward the West, not only for customs and traditions but also for aesthetic features, therefore unavoidably for cosmetic surgery. With a closer examination of this socio-cultural phenomenon, which has led to the birth of an army of people wearing the same mask, I decided to elaborate my collection based on the introspection induced by the waiting for the operations. Precisely, pausing the instant between before and after, time fragment during which the patient is truly free to be themselves, to feel their own body without seeing it, to experience themselves as a pulsating being beyond the reflex and the image of themselves. The recurrent elements are a reworking of various types of gowns for doctors or patients and other elements borrowed from the world of medicine such as the use of gloves, bandages, gauzes, plasters. Moreover, stitches and cutting marks referable to Orlan’s extreme performances. Not least, however, is the surrealist interpretation of the body, in a dreamlike way and for certain aspects ironic. The body finds itself dismembered and reassembled almost randomly. Among the works that have influenced me the most, there are Claude Cahun’s photographs, who former, thanks to the transvestism, played with her image, and the and the macabre designs with a slightly vintage taste by Laurie Lipton, fundamental in the choice of materials and textures.