FIORELLA DELCASTILLO

Lima, Peru

FIORELLA DEL CASTILLO (Lima, Peru)

 

Biography:

Fiorella Del Castillo is a film photographer based in Perú. Her work is an exploration of the body through self-portraiture using experimental methods that create through destruction.

Artist Statement:

Devenir-materia (in English “Becoming-matter”) is a visual exploration of the materiality of the body through interventions on the photographic support. The look on the body resides in perceiving it as a material space, lacking scientific meanings and a projective expression of the individual psyche. The idea is to visually think the body as a sensible surface.

Matter consists in the principal component of bodies, susceptible to any kind of form and change, perceivable through the senses. The objective of these images is to remove the volume from the body and turn it into a surface where the organic can be transformed into malleable matter.

The body is explored from its material surface: the skin, unattached from its subjective properties to influence in the physical ones. From this perspective the meaning of the skin is de-normalized and interpreted as physical matter incapable of feeling pain.

By deforming the body and large format film negatives with heat, surfaces that according to conventions should remain intact, I explore the possibilities of their different material states. Through extreme temperature the plastic structure of the film negative is altered, producing patterns and textures that resemble those of an epidermal tissue.

Practice Statement: How does photographing on film (or using your material photographic process of predilection) inform your artistic practice?

Film allows me to explore the contained image through its materiality. Through intervention, I’m capable of transforming the photo by tactile means. One would say that photography is a way of detaching from reality, the problem is I never felt connected to it in the first place. The necessity to intervene the film negatives appeared as a mechanism to get closer to the reality captured in the image. By burning and transforming my self-portraits I actually feel more connected to my body, and in this way it functions as second skin.

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