Luna Paiva
Centro Cultural Recoleta. Buenos Aires
The TV and the celebrity gossip magazines have brought to the forefront of public consideration a series of vaudeville characters, dancers with generous curves in the habit of airing with unusual shamelessness and before millions of people details of their sometimes turbulent existence. Vida de diva (A diva’s life) is Luna Paiva’s (Paris, 1980) new photographic essay, exhibited at the Recoleta Cultural Center, which features a series of vedettes of the national scene, from the stunning Adabel Guerrero to the mythical Isabel Sarli.
The artist resorts to sunlight in the case of young divas and to nocturnal shadows in the images of those who have already retired. Protagonists of the night and omnipresent in the media during daytime, the artists are photographed by Paiva in the privacy of their homes, showing their built (at the gym, in sessions of plastic surgery) bodies. Unexpected daily life scenarios and provocative poses of the artists, barely attired with feathers and sequins, in these portraits that dislocate the viewer. The photographer shows them in their duality, dedicated workers and icons of frivolity. Paiva, who recognizes her father, the renowned photographer Roland Paiva as her master, also studied art history and archaeology at the Sorbonne, filmmaking in New York, and theater in Paris, before devoting herself exclusively to photography in 2005, the year of her first exhibition.
