Taping Faces By Elda Bellone

An exploration of human features through a series of creative portraits.

Following on the footsteps of Encoded Icons, Elda Bellone’s latest artworks focus on portraits. This time, the Taping Faces series looks away from renowned personalities. Instead, it delves into the collective and singular features of humans. Made with electrical and duct tape, the dynamic portraits boasts overlapped lines that accentuate certain facial traits to both enhance and simplify the image. Using repeated gestures and simple lines that remind of primordial sculpture and art, the artist presents facets of different personalities. The raw illustrations of various characters create a tapestry of humanity.

Each character in the Taping Faces series has a particular identity. At the same time, the thickened, fluid lines capture universal traits as well as particular details. Reduced to a simpler form, the portraits don’t have any shadows or extra detailing. Rather, they distill the features of a person in a raw depiction of a human. By creating the impression of a real individual, the artworks also remind of a scarecrow, the most basic copy of a human. And the result? A series of tactile, organic portraits that reveal as much about each character as they do about the features of humanity as a whole. Photographs© Elda Bellone.