Nicola Costantino

b. 1964, Rosario, Argentina

BiographyIngestion and clothing are two of the cultural nucleus that Nicola Costantino addresses in her body of work. These are associated with a series of rituals, customs and technologies which have acquired different modalities and directions during the past twelve years. One of the obsessive and recurrent aspects in her work is the treatment of the animal and human anatomy, which are sifted in a violent manner through the filters of ingestion and fashion.Rosario, the city where Costantino was born and where she studied, has an artistic tradition of rupture and political participation, which in the last three decades of the 20th century has also been distinctive for its tendency toward conceptualism. These three notions - rupture, politics and concept- are notably present in Costantino´s work. Since her very first exhibit, when the artist set up an installation of sculptures evoking libidinous gnomes (II Baccanale, 1989), the ingestion ritual has been treated from a perspective of degradation and abjectness.In 1997, her work was first shown internationally at ARCO art fair. In 1998 she represented Argentina at the Art Biennial of Sao Paulo in Brazil. The theme of this Biennial was “anthropology and cannibalism”. In this theoretical framework she presented her human-skin fashion designs. In 1999 she was invited to participate in the First Biennial of art in Liverpool, UK, and she presented Human Furriery at a downtown corner in the 15 meter-wide window display of Lewi’s Store, with 12 mannequins “modeling” her designs. Soon to follow were other solo displays at the Miro Foundation in Barcelona and, in 2001 her own Project Room at Madrid’s ARCO Fair. In 2001, from May through to August, “Human Furriery Boutique” was held at Herzliya Museum of Art of Tel Aviv, Israel. In May, Costantino showed her work at Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum of New York. In 2004 she launched Savon de Corps at Malba Museum in Buenos Aires.Savon de corps is a luxury cosmetic item. Each soap is made with 3% of the artist’s body fat, which was obtained from a liposuction to which Costantino submitted herself for this project. This seems to define the aesthetic domain of the work. The installation is the launching of Savon de Corps, where the main character is the 3% of Nicola’s essence.Francis Ponge’s words dedicated to soap “some gabbling is permitted when the soap is involved, make fun of oneself, make fun of the words. But always with the soap in our hands…”Do we end with our hands any cleaner, with our speech any purer? Does Savon de corps lead us to a personal confrontation with our own personal limitations and our own reactive behaviour? Or are we taken by its beauty and inspired by the possibility of our own transformation as individuals?http://www.phillipsfinearts.com/sculpture.htm#

Person TypeIndividual

Terms