| David Charles and Gustavo Lacerda have an ongoing project exploring a very simple concept that appeals, well, to everyone: sex. David visualizes an idea and Lacerda has the perfect photographic style to bring them to life. They start working on the photo way before it’s taken. From set design to art direction they work together to lock down every last detail that makes their work so complex yet simple at the same time—“layers of lust,” as Lacerda likes to classify their work. Their latest collaboration is entitled The Knitting Project. In the past years, knitting has become a trend amongst the 20-something-year-olds and surprisingly, now it’s sexy. | 
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David Charles and Gustavo Lacerda
Courtesy of the artist.David Charles and Gustavo Lacerda have an ongoing project exploring a very simple concept that appeals, well, to everyone: sex. David visualizes an idea and Lacerda has the perfect photographic style to bring them to life. They start working on the photo way before it’s taken. From set design to art direction they work together to lock down every last detail that makes their work so complex yet simple at the same time—“layers of lust,” as Lacerda likes to classify their work.
Their latest collaboration is entitled The Knitting Project. In the past years, knitting has become a trend amongst the 20-something-year-olds and surprisingly now it’s sexy. Try walking around Williamsburg or the Mission in San Francisco and check out the coffee shops full of cute hipsters making “vintage” sweaters and/or gloves. It’s ridiculous. Exactly this ridicule is what inspired them to create this body of work. Well, that and the fact that hipsters don’t really believe in shaving. The intent of this project is to add an extra sexual appeal and treat this “trend” with irony and self-deprecation. Another conceptual layer of it all is recycling. The woman is turning her pubic hair into beautifully crafted sweaters.
Charles and Lacerda also created along with illustrator Cristiano Seixas a series of sweaters knitted with actual human hair that was produced in Brazil by fashion designer Júlia Valle. The Knitting Project is part of the Autista collective and was exhibited at the Grafuck show at Nucleus Gallery in Los Angeles this past December.
Purificadora is the duo’s first project. Charles and Lacerda wanted to bring cleanliness back into the female body. They believe that the excessive exposure of women in vulgar cultural situations has taken the “purity” out of women. They wanted to rediscover the essence of how beautiful sex is and how a more clinical look of a naked body can somehow remind the extreme places where pleasure can take us. The curves have a mysterious form. You can’t quite tell which part of the body you’re looking at, but that’s intentional, to give all body parts equal status of sexiness. Why can’t a shoulder be just as hot as a voluptuous butt cheek? The thin hairs also have a strong presence in the photos. Their job is to ground us back in reality and let us know that although they are very close to perfection, they too are flesh, hair, and blood.
