Antidote

The book Antidote is an exploration of the body and the psyche, wherein visual artist Laura Hospes presents self-portraits of a performative nature. Hospes engages in various physical experiments, such as binding her skin with wire to accentuate its soft parts or painting her body with white paint against a white background to gradually blend in. Through these performative experiments, she investigates the human body, present in all its distorted forms, and confronts severe destruction by means of healing. The book is, paradoxically at times, an homage to the body and the skin, resilient entities capable of enduring much, even when the psyche falters.
Laura Hospes’s photography, with its profound exploration of self-portraiture, echoes the conceptual themes explored by John Coplans. Both artists use their own bodies as both the subject and medium of their work, challenging conventional representations of nudity and vulnerability. Coplans, known for his stark, fragmented depictions of his aging body, laid a foundation that Hospes builds upon by presenting her body in unconventional poses that shift the viewer’s focus from the erotic to the existential.