25th of March 2020
LACKING AND DESIRE
Everything begins with a lack of and desire. Man has always craved what he can’t have and today’s yearning is called a hug. Who’d ever have thought it? This black swan has changed the sense of good sense and has melted the glaciers of withheld emotions: separation and belonging.
‘Hands and arms are the instruments with which you can touch a person or push them away, love them or fight them’ this is how, the very Milanese and forward-thinking artist Alessandro Teoldi, describes his work, created by sewing together in-flight blankets from different airlines.
Four years ago whilst flying came intuition: How do we move around? A plane connects people and countries in one big hug… the faces and hands sewn together are in between abstraction and figuration but you still feel embraced. The act of sewing something from faraway, reorganises the geographical map that you have in your mind and you suddenly feel part of the world.
Can cosmetics do this too?
A HUG BEYOND THE MIRROR
Just as Teoldi’s sewing of pieces of blankets of exotic origin unite cultures and smash distances, so our main actives will enclose corners of the planet in just a few ounces. Maybe our suppliers from five different continents will embrace each other in cosmetic formulas with an unprecedented complicity of whoever choses to wear them…
Today the world seems so big, over the top to the extent that it devours us and the excess of localism, seen too in beauty, appears to be the only way forward. We want to learn how to abandon ourselves to life and rediscover the art of lounging around without that annoying sense of guilt, without feeling ridiculous in front of the thousand questions that fear fosters.
More time in front of the mirror with make-up and face masks during isolation has revealed new truths to us. Taking care of oneself can in fact be an act of contemplation to be entrenched and not lost in the daily grind! And yet, the toughest thing is looking at yourself for what you really are without any gimmicks, you and the mirror or better still the mirror in you and then I ask you: how many people would still hug you?
Trust me, the artistic blanket by Teoldi could just be the solution
Photo credits: artist Alessandro Teoldi