Maurizio Anzeri is a London based Italian artist, who works with discarded portraits which he reinvents through creative needlework and embroidery.  He uses synthetic hair as his thread of choice, which he stitches and sews on vintage photographs to create complex geometrical patterns and structures. Although rich in colors and extremely animated, his works are at the same time uncanny: they deprive the characters of their original individuality by overlaying mysterious veils and masks on the portraits. Nevertheless, Anzeri emphasizes certain facial features (like the eyes or the mouth – salient cues of social relevance) which manage to effectively radiate new expressions. As a body of work, Anzeri’s series has to be seen as  a resourceful reinterpretation of identities and a powerful means of suggesting alternative stories.

Anzeri is mostly known for his life-size hair sculptures. He graduated with an MA in Fine Art (Sculpture) from The Slade School of Fine Art in 2005. He was selected as one of the top 100 young emerging artists in the January 2008 edition of Flash Art, and was one of 30 artists shortlisted for the 2008 Sovereign European Art Prize. See below for some choice pieces of his embroidered photographs series:

discovered via demo.creatia

Author : Jellyfish

Jellyfish is a regular contributor to Neocha EDGE, discovery engine of creative content and emerging youth culture in China, and a full-service idea and execution house that helps clients understand, engage, and co-create with Chinese creative communities.