L’UTOPIA DEL CORPO

In Utopia del corpo (The Utopia of the Body), the figure is not imagined as a complete or fixed organism, but as something in formation, a material presence in transformation. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s idea of the “utopian body,” the body here is not a symbol of perfection, but a space of instability: at once physical and imagined, tangible and projected, constantly shaped by perception and interpretation.

Papier-mâché becomes the medium through which this tension takes form. Emerging from pulp and fragments, the material slowly consolidates, almost like a body gathering itself. Its surfaces evoke both geological layers and organic skin, suggesting that sediment and organism, time and growth, erosion and construction all coexist.

The body in this work is not carved out of matter, but assembled and compressed. It appears through accumulation rather than subtraction. Cavities and openings remain visible, reminding us that a body is never fully closed or complete. It exists through recognition, through the act of seeing and naming.

Fragile yet dense, the form seems suspended between appearance and disappearance. The work lingers at the threshold where matter begins to resemble a body. In that moment, something happens: material, perception, and language briefly align, and we agree to call it a body.