This photo series is the culmination of the collaborative work of seven Los Angeles based artists, each of whom specialize in photography, performance, garment design and construction, and hair and make up. This collaborative work is an exploration of reclamation and transformation as it pertains to contemporary notions of beauty, identity and the vessel, cycles of death and rebirth, and the compounding of different life forms and environments in our tech-accelerated and hyper-globalised world.
Alessandro is photographed at the Hansen Dam Recreation Center in the neighborhood of Pacoima, in northern Los Angeles County. The dam was constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s, but the history of the region dates back hundreds of years to when the Tataviam people established villages. The town’s name derives from “Pagoinga Village”, which translates as “the entrance.” Now a public space, humans, plants, animals, and detritus occupy the land.
The garments Allesandro wears are sewn from fabric featuring images of the found remains of mammals and reptiles digitally assembled with backgrounds of trees, leaves, and concrete. Printed on mesh and fitted to the wearer's body the garments become another skin. Their fur gloves, collar, and hat are made from toy stuffed animals that were salvaged and skinned. Her glossy hair and makeup reflect the light, making her shine, and emphasizing the extension of her hair and eyelashes. Taken together, the imagery, skin, fur, color, hair and body metamorphosize into a new being, as is the nature of the infinite merging and diverging realities that make up our world.
Through refusing to accept identities prescribed by eurocentric cis-heteronormative values, we regenerate, becoming creatures that are a culmination of dreams, ancestry, earth, other life forms, and the processes of life and death.
Birth is a continuous cycle that unfolds as we transition through time, shedding pieces that no longer serve us. We exchange forces with the dead and dying. Matter is discarded and reclaimed for transformation and sustainment. The ways we adorn our vessels are a celebration of this evolution and transformation.
Living in an era of mass death, of humans, the Earth, all species, societal notions, we can paw through the rubbish, tend to our nest, and lace reinforcement through ephemera to celebrate the forms of life that persist in defiance. We adorn ourselves with memorials of death, and as they lie against the heat of our skin, they reform our vessels and summon new life.
This shooting caught the attention of muscian Caroline Polachek, and was commisioned for New York Fasion Week 2021.