Bodies Project

From Canon to Cyborg

In the history of human civilization, the body has always had a significant role in culture and art, and Man has never stopped looking at himself - his own physical structure - before and more than anything else, till to imagine, and to represent, even the Gods in human form.

From the prehistoric callipigs venuses, to Botticelli's Born of Venus, to the anorexic models of the 21st century, even in the changing of the idea of beauty, this special attention to material, tangible himself, has never failed. And this cultural relationship with the body has marked the history of art.

But this relationship is not - or has ever been - exclusively aesthetic. The body has been and is a tool of work, and an expressive tool; and it was, and is, the subject of human intervention. From the earliest tattoos to aesthetic surgery and transplants, Man has never stopped acting on his body, trying to modify it.

And in this millennial dialectical relationship, which we could symbolically summarize in the arch that goes from the Dolier of Policleto to Molly by William Gibson, it encapsulates much of the cultural experience of the human species.

The 3ODI3S project invites artists to investigate this relationship, from classical antiquity - as represented in the arts - to the near future, tomorrow's cyborg, not only enriched with mechanics prostheses replacement, but with implemented expansive electronic grafts.