Purity
Holographic Embodiment at the HoloCenter on Governors Island
August 31 – October 27, 2019
3D image by Jesse Kleitman
Body painting is a unique form of art, temporary in its existence. Alongside performance and video, a hologram is a superb way to document the impermanence of a body painting, preserving it in 3D.
Holography, like analog photography, is not digital. It requires the exposure of light on a photosensitive film to capture an image followed by traditional development in a darkroom. Holography is completely old school in its nature, entirely hand made, and, if you will, pure.
The body painting, tells the modelʼs story. Sylva is a muse regarded with love, hate, joy, envy, as well as hope. The white rose reflects a similar conflict with its beauty; petals and thorns, upon a mother of pearl clamshell –both representing purity. A pure beauty is revealed; one that is almost untouchable and etherial. It becomes an aesthetic that reaches beyond the physical. Sylva is a true to life siren, she radiates beauty and possesses an eccentric magnetism that people from all walks of life sense. Sylva has a genuinely adventurous spirit and has experienced things that ordinary people might fear and has done things that ordinary people would never do. She is unquestionably honest, loyal, fearless, shameless, and beautiful. She represents the things most strive to be.
The hologram combines the white rose, mother of pearl, Sylva and her regal posture, but also contains painted versions of traditional sculptural fig leaves. One virtually conceals her nudity while the other falls gently away with conceptual purpose signifying the taboo struggles of body painting and nudity.