ΠΡΟΣΘΕΣΙΣ (PROSTHESIS)

Prosthesis, from the Ancient Greek Προσθεσις, means addition, augmentation.

In 2019 a woman with breast cancer had the idea to do something creative about it and organised the exhibition MAMA with a number of artists. As part of this project, I created the sculpture I give you my breast: The Tits Tree (original title:Te doy Mi Mama: The Tits Tree). I asked women I met in my everyday life if they would lend me their breasts in order to create the form of the tits for The Tits Tree in solidarity with breast cancer sufferers. They also signed a form allowing me to use their breast and expressed emotion in the work. Women  of all ages and different social backgrounds participated, some had had breast cancer, the majority had not, some were mothers, others were not. During the making of the moulds of the breasts, the volunteers and I related to each other and talked, all the women would tell me about their feelings about the project as well as their own experiences, no one kept silent. I felt those emotions and listened to incredible stories, including some about rape. Many women cried while telling their experiences. This women's involvement in the process made a great impression on me.

I planned to redo the The Tits Tree during lock - down. I only had to modify it, the breasts could hang from one of the beautiful trees where the exhibition is held, which is easy for others to do, as I did not want to travel to Switzerland during the pandemic. The art had to travel alone. And fortunately art overcomes barriers and borders. Art unites and brings people closer together. 

While sculpting human forms, I often feel like a plastic surgeon, a recurring idea I entertain while I work. 

The title of this work, ΠΡΟΣΘΕΣΙΣ (PROSTHESIS in ancient greek), is a word which describes an artificial extension of the body, which extends or substitutes a missing part, or which has an aesthetic function. The sculpted breasts are made of stoneware, an ancient material, an amalgam, something added to the existing mass of material, possibly for aesthetic purposes.  Προσθεσις also means something added to a place. Here it could also mean a human body part added to a beautiful tree... I cannot escape this controversial and highly necessary connection with nature, which should always be celebrated. The Beautiful Healing Tree is a prior series of mine.

My  Προσθεσις are tear shaped, they often evoke profound emotions, it does not matter if positive or negative. In the concave interior of each sculpture there is a testimony, a sentence or a written word, which the women expressed when they symbolically donated their breasts to The Tits Tree project.

In  Προσθεσις, I am an artist and a surgeon, I produce the breast, install it, and listen without prejudice. That is my job whether the breast prosthesis are necessary or additions, aesthetic or functional, necessary or superfluous, becoming or disproportionate, fundamental or optional, improving or pathetic, beautiful or ugly, elegant or vulgar, they inevitably carry with them some kind of emotion. Emotions, thoughts, hopes and dreams, memories, good as well as bad ones, flow and blend with the passing of time. 

These Προσθεσις, hanging on a string, look like fruits of the tree, fluctuating with the wind, reminding us of past and future events. They endure the elements or adapt to them. They can be adopted together with their emotions and voluptuousness.

Some scarves were once my Προσθεσις. When I was a teenager I tried to hide my growing breasts. I remember walking hunched over and wore an exaggerated number of scarves at a time, so no one would see them.