Nicola en el
Hotel Brisas.
Fotografía de
Marcos López

[...] This complex preoccupation with human skin is further investigated in Boutique, a storeroom filled with ersatz ­leather fashion items and accessories created from skin‑like silicone by Nicola Costantino (b. Argentina, 1964). Tan coats, shoes, dresses and corsets carry an overall pattern of reddish‑brown male nipples and bodily orifices such as navels and anuses, occasionally decorated with human hair. In her concise, excellently written, catalog essay, Katz Freiman, discusses Costantino's work from its political, sexual and social aspects. The objects’ unsetling visual quality underlines society's escape from its inhibitions and a defiance of taboos. A woman wearing these clothes not only remains practically naked but they are a reminder of a chic “vanitas”, a type of “nature morte” placed on a coat hanger and like the extinguished candle, the wilting flower and the skull, attests to the transience of life.

Permission to invade one's privacy and as a result produce public statements is the subject of two exhibitions of staged photographs that deal with personal idiosyncrasies. [...]