Ultracorpi was born as a funny game and as a reaction. It mocks that kind of “fierce” post-production work that we can often see on photographies portraying women and that literally devastates their identity. “Ultracorpi” is a project about that apparent self-acceptance that is accomplished only when we end to become totally unrecognizable, even to ourselves. If, on one side, this project can be frivolous regarding its pure form, it is actually the rawest and most painful one on its message side. Behind those funny and cute faces, digitally manipulated and distorted until they became unrecognizable, you can find the weaknesses of a woman who is not able to accept herself as she is, as well as a society that craves for reaching beauty but loses its true meaning. Everyday I see over-manipulated images on the internet: soothed faces in a manner that skin pores are erased and so such surfaces resemble plastic, like dolls. Polymers dyed with airbrush. I remember there was a period of time when freckles were omnipresent. I even found a tutorial on Youtube about how to apply them to faces with no freckles. So I realized this series of dolls with round faces carrying minute features and rainbow-like freckles. In “Ultracorpi” everything drifts away from physical reality, as every detail is exagerated. Paint stains and spots cover those faces rendering them even more unreal, even more distant from the natural world, but the process through which all this is realized is actually real, and it is the same process we see everyday when browsing a magazine or a social network.
Dayana Montesano
