Joining us in London and Buenos Aires...
LONDON
Emilia Telese is an artist and writer based in Sussex. Born in Italy, she graduated from Fine Arts Academy in Florence in 1996. She has exhibited worldwide since 1994, including in the New Forest Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2005), Ars Electronica (Austria), ZKM (Germany), Chashama (NYC), Centro Cultural Telemar (Rio De Janeiro), Manege (St Petersburg), Leeds City Gallery, ArtSway(New Forest) and the Freud Museum (London). Her practice includes interactive and body-responsive technology, film and live art, installation, literature and public art. Often site-specific., it deals with conscious engagement, political and social debate, non-verbal communication and the questioning and deconstruction of behaviour.
Emilia founded the Edible Construction Company in 2006 with Chris Biddlecombe and Guyan Porter, an artist-led initiative creating socially engaged art in the public realm. She produces and presents Radio Sophia, a bilingual radio programme in Italian and English language on Brighton community radio Radio Reverb FM. Emilia Telese is an Artsway Associate.
Emilia Telese has dealt with the image of women in the media throughout her work, exploring beauty stereotypes and the distorted image of self through work such as “Life of a Star” (presented at the 2005 Venice Biennale) and “Perfect Ten” (first presented at Leeds City Art Gallery) Her work can be seen on www.emiliatelese.com
Wendy Hicks, photographer of Fashioning Aspirations.
I want to change culture to celebrate body diversity as opposed to promoting a specific body shape such as extreme thinness which is currently in fashion. Media representations of thin airbrushed bodies impact not only on women of all ages, but increasingly young men by instigating feelings of inadequacy and breeding body insecurity in those who view them. The title of my work is 'Fashioning Aspirations'. Members of the general public are photographed as if they are in fashion advertisements. The photographs are then digitally manipulated to create bodies that are so thin that they do not actually exist and are consequently impossible to emulate. They also represent a demographic of people who suffer from the eating disorder anorexia.
Hi, I’m Rachel Weaver, a freelance MUA.
I feel passionately that everybody has the right to feel beautiful. In today’s fashion/beauty industry it is increasingly difficult to fit into the narrow standards of beauty that is fast becoming the norm. Every person deserves to feel confident in their own skin, no matter how they choose to express themselves.
Caroline Smith is an artist and educator whose work lies in the intersections of writing and performance. Her projects include participatory performance and interactive writing and are produced for outdoor spaces, theatres and galleries. Her themes explore complicity and exchange, looking at strategies that offer the potential to transgress something; to reveal what lies hidden, dormant and mostly unspoken. She collaborates with diverse audiences often as her alter ego,Mertle Merman. Smith was appointed a Teaching Fellow at the University of Greenwich in June 2010.
BUENOS AIRES
Dorina Vidoni was born in Buenos Aires in 1955. At nineteen, she launched her first designs in her hometown, a flash-forward of her present collections. That very same year she studied in the Academy of Fine Arts until she emigrated and spent the next twenty-two years living in Spain, Mexico and Italy.
The experiences she has had in her many voyages around the world, coupled with her multiethnic ancestry, inspires the trans-cultural aesthetic and spirit of her designs. During her nineteen years in Italy she studied Anthropology and obtained an MA in Psychology. As a psychologist and investigator, she gives courses, lectures and group seminars throughout Europe, focusing on all human dimensions: body, emotion and mind. Simultaneously, she published an anthology including poems written throughout her life and illustrated with her own paintings, “Neither too close, nor too far” (Writings of a quest); “Ni tan cerca, ni tan lejos” (Escritos de una búsqueda), Editorial Troquel, 1994. She then translated from English to Spanish, Michael Gazzaniga’s neuroscience book “Mind Matters”, which inspired part of her research on reality construction.
Back in Argentina, and just before launching her present firm named after her, she studied with Guillermo Roux at his well-known Argentine School of Art, while coordinating groups of multidisciplinary investigation. From 2005 to 2008, she directed Myriades 1 (myriades1.com), a cultural magazine, which reflects those meetings and depicts Dorina Vidoni´s cultural aspect of her trademark. In 2004, she presented her first collection of this new project, devoted to reconcile matter with emotion and mind, embracing surface and depth, the inner-self with the outer world through a new concept of design, which intertwines aesthetics and freedom.
Dorina Vidoni is currently living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and she spends her free time with her three children and grandson.
Dorina Vidoni nace en Buenos Aires en 1955. A los 19 años presenta su primera colección de diseño en su ciudad natal, con trazos que anteceden a las actuales. El mismo año comienza sus estudios en Bellas Artes, que interrumpe para irse a vivir al exterior durante más de dos décadas, entre España, México e Italia. Realiza numerosos viajes, que sumadas a su ascendencia familiar multiétnica, inspiran la estética y el sentido transcultural de sus diseños.
Durante su estadía en Italia realiza estudios en antropología y finaliza la licenciatura en psicología. Como psicóloga e investigadora dirige cursos y seminarios grupales en varios países de Europa, enfocados hacia la integración de las diversas dimensiones humanas (cuerpo, emoción, mente). En la misma época publica una compilación de poesías, escritas a lo largo de su vida, en un libro ilustrado por sus cuadros: Ni tan cerca, ni tan lejos (escritos de una búsqueda), Editorial Troquel, 1994. Luego, traduce del inglés al español, “Mind Matters”, libro de neurociencia de Michael Gazzaniga, en el que basa parte de sus investigaciones con respecto a la construcción de la realidad.
Al regresar a la Argentina estudia en la Escuela de Artes Plásticas del renombrado pintor argentino Guillermo Roux y coordina grupos multidisciplinarios de investigación. La revista cultural que dirige desde 2005 hasta 2008, Myriades 1 (www.myriades1.com), representa la materialización de aquellos encuentros y parte del área cultural de la marca Dorina Vidoni. En 2004 presenta su primera colección de la actual firma de diseño, al servicio de la reconciliación de la materia con la emoción y la mente; para religar la superficie con lo profundo, lo interno con lo externo, a través de un nuevo concepto de diseño, en el que se integran estética y libertad.
Dorina Vidoni reside actualmente en Buenos Aires y comparte su tiempo con sus tres hijos y su nieto.