IKIGAI

In Ikigai, the body functions as a territory of inscription. The human, the animal, and the mechanical converge upon it, not as independent elements, but as parts of a single visual construction. The face retains a precise and intense presence, while images, signs, and forms accumulate around and upon the skin, expanding the figure beyond its anatomy.

The tattoos are essential to this construction. The skin ceases to be merely a surface and becomes a support for chosen images: animals, anatomies, and signs become part of the body that bears them. The act of tattooing introduces an ancient and deeply cultural practice: making visible on the body that with which one establishes a relationship of belonging, memory, or identification. The image does not merely represent the individual; it also reveals the images with which that individual chooses to construct themselves.

Among them appears the snake, one of the most enduring symbolic figures in the history of cultures. Its ability to shed its skin has made it a recurring image of renewal and transformation, although its meanings have never been singular. In the work, it need not be resolved into a specific interpretation: its power lies precisely in that accumulated memory, which we recognize even before assigning it a meaning.

In contrast to this organic repertoire, the mechanical introduces another order of forms. Tubes, gears, and artificial structures integrate into the figure until it becomes difficult to determine where the body ends and what it has constructed begins. Nature, culture, and artifice thus occupy the same pictorial surface.

The painting emphasizes this condition through bursts of yellow and blue that cut across the composition. These gestures do not follow anatomy or describe objects: they cover, divide, and connect. In contrast to the figurative precision of certain areas, these interventions draw the eye back to the materiality of paint. The body is constructed through symbols, but also through paint.

The title, Ikigai, introduces the Japanese concept associated with that which gives value and meaning to an existence. In the work, this idea finds visual expression in an identity built through accumulation and choice: what we inherit, what we recognize as our own, and what we incorporate into our way of being in the world.

Within The Archetype, Ikigai explores the capacity of certain images to endure as their forms and contexts change. The animal transformed into a symbol, the symbol inscribed on the skin, the body traversed by artifice: different cultural layers come together in a contemporary figure. 

The figure thus emerges as an identity made of images: some inherited, others chosen, and still others under construction.