Body of Work

Arianna Cruz

Body of Work is a collection of playfully bloody scenes that contain elements of body horror that confront the viewer with the grotesque nature of people's relationships with their bodies, whether positive or negative. The images, digital but printed and framed, will pour out of their frames with resin and wooden and stoney sculptural inclusions to blue the line between the viewer and the world of the pictures. People are influenced by the depictions of beauty they see and internalize, and body horror preys upon people by making them perceive the sensations of what they see. So, the aim of this project is to use body horror to pull the viewer in to experience, and subsequently reflect, on the extreme lengths and intensity with which people change their own bodies. I want people to be confronted by the realization that beauty, whether pursued in positive or negative spirits, is not always a beautiful pursuit. If viewed through squinting eyes, many beauty practices are downright monstrous to look at.

About the Artist

As I’ve grown into this complicated and often harsh world, I’ve found a beauty and comfort in some of the darker, stranger, and sometimes morbid facets of human existence and imagination. My art tends to reflect that, delving into subject matter around what scares some and excites others. At the same time, I also like to create works of escapism, making the fantastical visible for eyes to escape into from the more terrifying real world.

Though I most commonly work in digital forms, I like to blend the past with the future: combining old styles and motifs with more modern technology, convenience, and sensibilities. Another large part of my body of work is printmaking, in which I tend to favor leaning on the old woodblock style seen used to create monsters on old seafaring maps. Additionally, I like to play with the styles of yesterday to show scenes that tie more in with the lens of today. More recently, I’ve been playing with the gracefully languid image of the Gibson Girl and drawing her aloof gaze with a dash of man-eater notes.

Altogether, my work can be taken to be like a curio cabinet being repurposed as a prop for a plague doctor at a Renaissance Faire. I’ve been populating this cabinet with increasingly more scenery and atmosphere-oriented work, and plan to continue doing so.

Additional Documentation [Forthcoming]