Nicola Costantino
Nicola Costantino was born in Rosario, Argentina, in 1964. She studied Fine Arts in her birthplace, specializing in sculpture. Her attention was always focused on her surgeon father’s operating room as well as on her mother’s dressmaking factory. In these two environments the origins of many of her works can be found. For example, for Peletería con piel humana (Fur Shop with Human Skin,1997), she created an epidermis-like fabric with which she designed, cut, and sewed purses, shoes, dresses, and coats. Or Savon de Corps (Body Soap, 2004): a soap made with 3% of her own body fat, obtained through liposuction. A controversial medium, no doubt, but the soaps appeared on the cover of the catalogue for the show Dangerous Beauty at the Chelsea Museum in New York. A corset made of that same skin is part of the MoMA collection.
Sculptor, taxidermist, cook, designer – always on the lookout for new techniques, and for a while now, the protagonist of her own photographs and videos, Costantino is one of the most celebrated contemporary Argentine artists. It is impossible to be indifferent to her work, which conceals a political, economic, and social critique behind a façade of delicate beauty, while making allusions to art history and the recent Argentine past. She flirts with death and perversion so as to emphasize the violence we inflict upon ourselves, on animals, or on those we love. That is the framework for interpreting Animal Motion Planet (2004), a series of orthopedic devices for unborn animals.
Following an early fascination with the issues of the Pinacoteca de los Genios (Gallery of Geniuses), she completed her university studies, and her development continued under the tutelage of sculptor Enio Iommi. She took a taxidermy course at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Rosario and later participated in a workshop with Pablo Suárez, who recommended her for the first group of the Barracas Workshop of the Antorchas Foundation. In 1995 she held a residency at the Houston School of Art. She also ventured into the industrial sector, where she learned to make silicone molds and polyester resin casts, which she then injected with flexible polyurethane foam. She used this technique to produce one of her most successful series, models of unborn animals with which she constructs friezes and sculptures, such as her Ternerobolas (Calf Balls), of up to 95 cm. in diameter. Two of her pieces can be found in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes collection.
Her international career took off in 1998, when she represented Argentina at the São Paulo Biennial with her human skin boutique. Since then she has participated in many shows at museums throughout the world, notably Liverpool (1999), Tel Aviv (2002), and Zurich (2011). In 2000 she held a solo exhibition at Deitch Projects (New York).
Gastronomy is another source of inspirations: she had created works from chains of chickens, and the with the bacchanal Cochon sur Canapé (Pig on a Canapé), which was sampled in 1993 at the J.B. Castagnino Museum in Rosario. Currently she is experimenting with molecular gastronomy and gelation, a glimpse of which was provided at arteBA 2017.
Her meeting with Gabriel Valansi in 2006 marked her entrance into the world of photography, with more than 30 images impersonating the works of Antonio Berni – La mujer del sweater rojo (The Woman in the Red Sweater) – which had so fascinated her in the pages of the Pinacoteca – Man Ray, Richard Avedon, Leonardo da Vinci, and Caravaggio. She won the Salón Nacional’s Grand Prize for that achievement in 2007. Her interest in video performance led her to create the self-referential work Trailer (2010) and to take on the historical figure of Eva Perón in Rapsodia inconclusa (Unfinished Rhapsody), with which she represented her country at the 55th Venice Biennial in 2013. This was a 360-degree panoramic video in which the artist reproduced Evita’s wardrobe, rooms, hairdos, and gestures.
In 2014 she was the protagonist of her own biopic, La Artefacta, which was shown at film festivals and won and award at Rimini. Directed by Natalie Cristiani, this film blurs the borders between documentary and fiction, revealing her creative mechanisms. Her most recnt production features the Fountain of Life from Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights in sculptural form, surrounded by a photographic frieze of a desert landscape: El Verdadero Jardín Nunca es Verde (The Real Garden Is Never Green), 2016.