Nebris is an interactive multimedia costume based on augmented reality. The garment contains a constellation of visual tags, hand-drawn by the artist and then sewn, embroidered, printed, concealed beneath flaps, hems, and pockets, or attached through magnetic buttons and velcro elements. As these markers are gradually hidden and revealed through the interaction with the audience, they activate sounds, voices, forms, and 3D animations: a living archive of digital images emerging from the metaverse and taking shape on the performer’s body.

The principle of augmented reality is to overlay the physical world with an additional layer of digital information. When this technology is used by an artist, that layer ceases to be merely functional and becomes imaginative, symbolic, and poetic. It forms a second skin invisible to the naked eye, made of images, video, animation, and sound. This expanded layer can be accessed through dedicated applications downloaded onto personal devices such as smartphones and tablets. In this way, the physical world becomes both container and trigger for further content, transforming itself into an augmented space: unstable, hybrid, and alive with invisible presences.
 

In Nebris, the body of the performer becomes the threshold through which this invisible archive is made visible. The costume is not simply worn; it is activated, disclosed, and performed. Its surface behaves like a responsive membrane, a site where the physical and the virtual continuously fold into one another. What the audience encounters is not a static garment, but a living interface: a body clothed in latent images, waiting to be summoned into appearance.
 

The Skin of the God

In classical Greek art and poetry, the nebris, the fawn skin, was one of the attributes of Dionysus and of his followers: satyrs, sileni, and maenads. Its presence testified to the archaic nature of Dionysian worship, preserving the memory of a remote civilization in which the skins of animals were the first garments of humankind. Even in later stages of culture, when clothing had long evolved beyond necessity, the animal skin continued to dress the image of the god as the residue of an ancient ritual world.
 

Nebris is a new skin: generative, augmented, and symbolic. It replaces the archaic animal pelt with a contemporary membrane of codes, signals, and digital apparitions, transforming the artist into the living avatar of herself. Here the sacred attribute of the god is translated into the language of mixed reality.
 

Shows
Il Video rende Felici, iconic exhibition on Italian Videoart curated by Valentina Valentini, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome - 2022
BODY (S)CUL(P)TURE personal exhibition at Fondazione Zoli, Forlì - 2024

Credits
Concept and art direction - Francesca Fini