| In the series of works entitled I Recompose Myself I represent a world of automatons composed by pieces that can be taken apart and easily reassembled—“terminator” mutants with the most curious and surprised human expressions. |  |
Vania Elettra Tam lives and works in Milan, Italy.
In the series of works entitled I Recompose Myself I represent a world of automatons composed by pieces that can be taken apart and easily reassembled—“terminator” mutants with the most curious and surprised human expressions. The subjects have my semblances because I tell stories of my intimate reality.
I describe two different worlds in my work. On one side, I analyze myself psychologically. I do this by substituting pieces of my body—an arm, a leg, or an eye, so that I can look at reality in another way and try on a new role. It is like an actor or a mannequin, who expresses the messages she has to tell by changing her clothes. On the other hand, I criticize the consumerist society that homologates absolute clichés, and that imposes induced needs to which one must be acclimated in order to avoid the exclusion from the majority.
Within the series I Recompose Myself there is a group of works that I consider particularly meaningful, called I recompose myself differently. In these paintings women of different ethnic groups assemble their body parts, creating an unusual racial blend: for example, the body of a Caucasian woman could be joined to Asian legs. In each work parts of my body are present as well. With this I mean that all of us carry, inside, a certain “diversity:” within his or her character, his or her genes, his or her taste.
In Mi metto la terza (“I change to a 36 C”) I wanted to emphasize that modern society pushes many of us to operate upon our bodies through plastic surgery, to try to reach Hollywood and fashion standards. In my works, cyber women alter parts of their bodies, screwing on the prosthesis they desire. Easy! I put another painting, Artefatto (“Artifact”) in a different context but still surrounded by unhappiness about body and gender: a man and a woman are joined at the pelvis by a zipper.
At the end, in a much more lighthearted environment, I wanted to show an unusual form of shopping: a woman in a boutique tries on feet instead of shoes. Here I want to criticize the shallowness with which we often decide to undertake a plastic surgery operation without considering risks.
