Tag Archives: Christopher Agostino’s Transformations

Three Boys from Haiti Become Pa Wowo — the Body Painting Photo of the Year

by Christopher Agostino

I know it’s only March, but I think I’m ready to declare this the best body painting photo I am going to see this year. Photographed by Phyllis Galembo, for her book Maske. I saw it in an article in the April 2012 National Geographic Magazine, along with ten others from the more than one hundred photos in her book of masqueraders from Africa and the African Diaspora.

 

 

“Not all masquerades require masks, or occur in Africa. In the Haitian port city of Jacmel three boys become Pa Wowo—painted, coconut-leaf-skirted peasants who personify poverty—for the spring carnival.” —from the accompanying text by Cathy Newman.

This is the true art of transformation—body art and masks used to make a social statement within a cultural context—this is true art, in the original social function for why there is art, before art became a means of decoration and personal expression in a Western context. Nothing I’ve ever painted for a competition, demonstration or in the studio holds a candle to the real thing like this.

See my fine art bodypainting at  https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/body-painting/

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Gallery ML, Philadelphia – April 6 Grand Opening of their New Location

(I received this announcement, which I am re-posting:)
GALLERY ML ANNOUNCES GRAND OPENING EVENT
NEW LOCATION, 111 ARCH STREET, PHILADELPHIA

“The pieces are awe-inspiring, kinetic and truly indescribable. Gallery ML is a place you’ve got to see to believe…” – Philadelphia Weekly

On Friday April 6th, Gallery ML, the world’s first and only collective body art gallery will open the doors to its brand new location with a very special, public First Friday reception.

Known for their over-the-top, unique and immersive First Friday events, the centerpiece of the evening will be dynamic live painting by guest artists Lawren Alice (2011 National RAW Visual Artist Of The Year), Scott Fray & Madelyn Greco of Living Brush (current Bodypainting World Champions), Nix Herrera (Face/Off Season 2), Roustan (Current North American Bodypainting Airbrush Champion), Natasha Kudashkina (2nd Place brush and sponge winner, North American Bodypainting Championship) and more.

The reception will also mark the opening of Central + Remote, 20 days spent in Nicaragua, an exhibition of new work by Philadelphia photographer Eric Ashleigh. With no schedule, and no plans, these pictures display the reality of a troubled culture, and his perception of the beauty the land presented as a dream.

The Grand Opening celebrates Gallery ML’s relocation to 111 Arch Street in Old City, Philadelphia. Boasting nearly four times the wall space of their previous location, the new Gallery ML is conveniently just a block away from the original Market Street gallery and will also house a full photography studio and giclee print lab.

It is Gallery ML’s mission to nurture, promote and celebrate the beautiful fine art side of bodypainting. Through our unique Artist Membership Program, bodypainters from around the world now have a physical destination and opportunity to submit their most original, imaginative representations of body art imagery to display in a respectable gallery setting. Rather than choosing to display cheap, over-sexualized images of body painting that degrade, demoralize and pervert the human figure, Gallery ML’s walls are adorned with art that is incredibly inspirational, unobtrusive and celebratory of the human body as a canvas. Established in April of 2010 and only one of two galleries in the world that has completely dedicated their walls to displaying body painting, Gallery ML is certainly unlike any gallery you’ve seen before.
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Hands through Time — Reaching Out for Help: the Meakambut People of Papua New Guinea

“We, the Meakambut people, will give up hunting and always moving and living in the mountain caves if the government will give us a health clinic and a school, and two shovels and two axes so we can build homes.”

Those are the closing words of a poignant article in the February 2012 issue of National Geographic magazine: “Last of the Cave People” by Mark Jenkins. An NGM team had gone up into the mountains of Papua New Guinea to report on one of the last nomadic cave-dwelling people in the world and found the remnants of a people barely surviving. Sickness, hunger, the sparsity of animals to hunt, infant mortality and an understanding that there might not be a future for them led John Aiyo, one of their leaders, to give this message to the NGM reporter to bring out of the forest and relay to the government.

The article is accompanied by beautiful photographs (which I am not allowed to use here) of a jungle we might easily mistake for paradise. One of the photographs was of hand stencils in a cave painting—the ubiquitous image of hands on cave walls, found throughout the world and throughout time. There is also a photograph of one of the tribesmen painted up, walking through the jungle. This surprised me, because books (see Books Page) such as Man as Art by Malcolm  Kirk and Tribes by Art Wolfe report that the people of Papua New Guinea only paint themselves for festivals—today, most of which are at least in part tourist exhibitions. The article suggests that in this case the men painted themselves specifically because they were heading down out of the mountains with the NGM reporter’s team.

To learn more about our programs and performances:  http://www.agostinoarts.com

See all of our videos on our AgostinoArts You Tube channel:  http://www.youtube.com/user/AgostinoArts

follow me for the face of the day:  https://twitter.com/#!/storyfaces

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