American photographer Kavan the Kid has expressed his disquiet emotions in the surrealist imagery that he produces. Fears, anxiety, depression are aspects unfolded in his visuals, and he talks openly about these personal struggles in this interview. He has collaborated with Human Code to create a candle with his artwork, to be sold online and […]
Category: Illness
Nikko Hurtado: Work Smart and Be Grateful
We met up with tattooist Nikko Hurtado at the end of a warm-winter day at the conference hall, a building located across the Golden State Tattoo Expo in Pasadena, where he and other prominent colleagues Joe Capobianco and BJ Betts conducted workshops to aspiring artists. Hurtado, the event co-host and studio owner of Black Anchor, […]
Transcending Sickness: Atmospheric Portraits by Nihil
Nihil is a French artist residing in Norway. “Ventre” is the name of his ongoing project, which includes short, cryptic texts and images filled with symptoms of illness and rapture, often with a medieval, religious slant. He describes his work as “portraits of saints and martyrs who lost their humanity to drown in divine serenity”; […]
Returning to the Jungle: The Artwork of Dawid Planeta
To Krakow-based artist Dawid Planeta, the jungle is a metaphor for “the mysterious world of [our] emotions”; as children, we explore the jungle with joy and curiosity, but as we age, we detach; the landscapes become alien and filled with fear. Last year, when Planeta became depressed, he turned to art. He began “Mini People,” […]
Poetic Darkness in Corpus Vertebrae’s Photography
Based in eastern Poland, Corpus Vertebrae (Michalina Wozniak) is a self-professed “photographer and dead soul.” Like dark haikus, her minimalist images plunge straight to the soul. Women wear skulls, beetles, and masks—images of death and transformation—signalling their submergence into a symbolic state of fathomless emotion. Using her work as a means of expressing her experience […]
In Sickness and Beauty: The Photography of Evelyn Bencicova
In haunting, theatrical compositions, photographer Evelyn Bencicova splices the beauty of vulnerability with the terror of illness and confinement. Recurring throughout her works are nude figures that crawl and cling together in empty, hospital-like rooms, their smooth, pallid skin evoking both a sensual euphoria and the fever of near-death. Sometimes the bodies arrange themselves into […]