Francesca Alaimo

Francesca Alaimo and the art of gender-ectomy.

Francesca Alaimo is a self-taught visual artist who creates interventions on paper through the manipulation and transformation of materials. Their work is centred on queer identity and existentialism; it explores shame, visibility, vulnerability and courage, starting a discourse on gender non-conformity, radical existence and identity validation from other perspectives and a place of questioning.

‘Through my art I want to challenge the oppressive and typecasting hetero-normative gaze and remind to practice self-care and self-love to those who walk the path of gender questioning and transformation’.

Francesca uses oils and acrylics on paper, and then proceeds to “undo” the painting using melted wax, challenging the idea of perfection, of the flawless finished work of art. It is a process of gender-ectomy that evokes the surgical procedure of removing a part of our body. This can be removing the concept of a gender binary system from within, or, in more practical terms, removing a body part that tie us to a socially predetermined gender identity at birth.

‘At the core of my work is the idea that our body is a situation, gender is performative and identity is a discovery. My intimate portraits are acts of emotional and physical exposure/disclosure that tell stories of journeys, transformations, memories and epiphanies’.

Each piece is an intervention on and intervention with and the artwork becomes the object and the maker of itself.