Martina Menegon

The rapture of the self – Virtual Sculpture 2019

Since the existence of the cyberspace, the physical body has been declared obsolete, dead, replaced and replaceable by technology and machines. There is an obsession with the redefinition of the self as well as an anxiety about body boundaries, consciousness, subjectivity and identity. We are facing a new experience of corporeality and subjectivity, a new artificial flesh and materiality. In “the rapture of the self”, virtual clones of the artist 3D-scanned body are trapped indefinitely in unnatural positions, resulted from an algorithmical anomaly. Their perpetual torture constantly shifts between ecstasy and anxiety, a rapture of the self and all its emotions. Through these perceivable avatars, the artist proprioceptively renegotiates the gap between the physical and the virtual, human and machines.

“Virtual Narcissism” is a series of virtual performative sculptures that show the untouched results of the artist’s body that has, over the past years, been obsessively 3D scanned. The artistic process challenges 3D scanning technique by self-scanning and remaining still simultaneously without loss of body datas in the final 3D model. The work reflects on the translation of the body into a virtual state, it creates a grotesque dialogue between the physical and the digital.