Peruvian artist Cecilia Paredes uses a mix of make-up, paint and costumes to make herself disappear in her own paintings. Like the real-life invisible man, Liu Bolin, she is a master of blending-in the background.
Paredes explains her technique as a way of making herself part of the landscape ïn a quest of belonging”. “The theme behind all is re-location after displacement and migration and how one has to adjust in order to belong. Tough it is, but it has to be done, without forgetting our origin,” the artist explains. With the help of her assistants, she applies make-up and body paint, and sometimes slips into special suits to make herself a subject of her own artworks. Unlike human chameleons like Liu Bolin, Cecilia Paredes sometimes likes to let her presence get noticed by the viewer, by leaving her hair stand out and letting them see the whites of her eyes, like in the artwork below.
