Disappearing Bodies, 2021, interactive sculpture (pvc, metal display stand, aluminium cnc cut sculptural pieces, Raspberry Pi, Thermal Camera, mini lcd screen, plexi)
Disappearing Bodies (2021) is an interactive sculpture created for The Orto Botanico Comunale di Lucca during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time marked by travel restrictions and isolation. The work engages with the botanical garden as a site of preservation, where disappearance is both resisted and aestheticized.
The human body is often used to materialize intangible concepts—an abstract assemblage shaped by social, political, and cultural narratives. When a body is gendered, assumptions are made about its function, socio-political condition, and permanence. Disappearing Bodies challenges this fixity by integrating an aesthetic of vanishing, transforming the body into an ephemeral presence rather than a fixed entity.
This piece is a non-performance, an embodied refusal inscribed into its material form. The transparent suit, mirroring the greenhouse’s architecture of steel and glass, dissolves the constraints imposed on gendered bodies—bodies that are historically manufactured and commodified within capitalist structures. The work disrupts the normative social scripts of the body, rendering it non-compliant within traditional frameworks of function and visibility.
At the heart of the installation, a thermal camera registers heat signatures, translating bodies into abstract, shifting forms. In this digital transformation, the body is liberated from its socio-political constraints, allowing for new possibilities of embodiment beyond fixed identities. By engaging with disappearance as a conceptual strategy, Disappearing Bodiesproposes a speculative space—one that reconfigures the body’s relationship to visibility, materiality, and representation.
exhibited at giungla.fest, ortobotanico.lucca by s.o.f.arts ▪️in collaboration with çanakkale biennial ▪️ curated by irene panzani ▪️thank you to deniz.erbas and @sanatorium_gallery for the transportation support ▪️📸 by martina angeli