Art & Design,Tattoo ArtMAR 31, 2018

When Makeup Becomes A True Art Form, The Eyes Are Turned Into Performance Spaces: Introducing Alessandra Morgante’s Ocular Sceneries

My name is Alessandra Morgante. I am a set designer and a makeup artist born in Catania, Sicily. I have been living in Imola, northern Italy, for many years now, and my studio at the center of the Old Town was the birth place of my Ocular Sceneries project. The series was born from the marriage of my two passions, theater and stage makeup. My eyes become a theatrical stage, where an airbrushed white background is the backdrop for landscapes and visionary characters balanced on my eyelashes.

These wearable paintings are made by me on myself. Each work requires months of preparation, from project phase to research and first sketches, up to the practical execution of the makeup and the miniatures-also handpainted- that will be applied on the eyes. The stages of each creation are documented by photographs, and these become the medium that transforms the artistic makeup into a work of art that can be exhibited.

The first series of Ocular Sceneries, photograped by Pietro Annicchiarico, was called “The Little Theater of the Stars”, and became a permanent exhibition at my studio. These works were inspired by the magic of theater and by the unique humanity that thrives behind and in front of the curtain: these artists are the ones who taught me how to see.

In the new project by the name “Nostrumare”, filmed and photographed by Maria Martina Mannino and Agostino fuso, once again my eyes become a stage, and with a “flutter of my eyelashes” I take the viewer on a journey through the myths, the legends and the stories of “our Mediterranean Sea”. The work is dedicated to the Sea that still washes over the stories of the immigrants towards the promised land. This is not only an homage to my homeland, but a tribute to all the stories that on that same Sea find their path and sometimes their epilogue.

The exhibition will be inaugurated in June to coincide with Imola in Musica 2018. This will be a new opportunity to stage some live performances in which I will be realizing some of my works in front of an audience. “The subject exists because it shows itself, and he allows the showing of itself to become the act, the building blocks of the places it has visited and shown.”(Alessandro Pitrè)

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