This is probably my best-known work, a video-performance piece in which the action is conceived specifically for the camera. In the live version, performed in front of an audience, I wear therapy electrodes on both arms set to maximum intensity and attempt to put on makeup.
 

The involuntary muscular contractions produced by the electric current are so violent that I completely lose control of my hands. Makeup spreads across my face, transforming it into a grotesque mask.

The convulsive movement of the hand becomes the symptom of a deeper condition: the pathology of social habit, revealing all its fragility when the system begins to break down. At the center of the work lies the conflict between conscious intention and external conditioning, between self-construction and imposed behavior.
 

Even tears become involuntary. The black pencil and mascara enter my eyes because I can no longer calibrate the gesture. Crying is no longer emotional expression, but mechanical consequence.

What emerges is a form of automatic suffering that is immediately transmitted to the audience through an involuntary empathic response, a conditioned connection that is intense, immediate, and ultimately useless.

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Shows
Mondrian Suite Art Space, Rome - 2013
Rapid Pulse Festival, Chicago - 2013

Bologna Fine Arts Academy -2013

Modern Panic IV Festival, London - 2013

Dimanche Rouge Festival, Helsinki - 2014

Illy Red Night @ Triennale di Milano - 2014

Watermill Center, New York - 2014

Roodkapje Radicals, Rotterdam - 2014

MAD Festival, Brussels - 2015

Cuerpo Y Territorio, Chile - 2017

SomoS Art Gallery, Berlin - 2018

Body + Camera @ MANA Contemporary, Chicago - 2019
CYBORG Fatale personal exhibition, Bologna - 2019
TILTED BODY International Festival of Performance art, Palermo - 2022

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Credits
Concept and art direction - Francesca Fini
Photo documentation - Carlo Maria Causati

Media
VIVO Media Arts, a conversation with Francesca Fini - open link
Inside Art review by Claudia Quintieri - open link