2023
watercolor and ink on canvas,
9 3.94” x 3.94” canvasses| 10 x 10cm

GIF on screen in acrylic frame

 

Giuseppe Tagliacozzi, Italy’s first cosmetic surgeon, lived for a time in Tagliacozzo. Taggliacozzi, grafted flesh from his patients’ arms, still attached, to the noses of his patients. Once bedridden in a special device to ensure that the flesh would not come off the arm, patients can now show their patches as they heal.

 

The face of a woman, Maya, of Persian descent, an area that competes with the most rhinoplasties in the world, becomes a status ‘symbol. A rhinoplasty plays to two audiences that know and don’t know, those who have witnessed a transformation, or have trained themselves to see a nose job, and those who have accepted the nose as part of the

nature, as having its proper place.

 

Grafting also took place in the Ducal Palace in Tagliacozzo in the 1980s, in the form of people who

carried away pieces of the building. Those familiar with the original appearance of the palace witnessed the transformation of a building, the removal of material from its origin and its placement in another. There are those who see the palace, and accept its aging nature, as a fracture.