I felt inspired to do this bodypainting after thinking about a traditional clothing item from my country of origin Romania.
I am talking about the ie, a cotton or linen blouse which is manually embroidered with all sorts of symbols and worn by the women in the countryside. Thinking of this item made me realize the power of tradition in our lives and how , regardless of our technological progress, we long for the familiar and for the traditional way of living.
I believe that there is nothing that feels as good as the soil of your native country, the place where you were born. The food, the culture, the way of talking and relating, all of these shape our blueprint for what we call home. Although many of us end up moving in a different country or change location temporarily, there is still a certain longing for our place of origin.
In my culture all of the patterns embroidered on the ie have a particular meaning. I am thinking of the habits that many women used to have back in the days and how many of them got lost as women began to work just as much as men: sewing, making carpets and wool socks, cooking their own bread, wearing traditional rustic clothes. I feel that under our modern clothing there is the natural traditional costume that we are invisibly wearing. Even if I put a very elegant designer dress which makes my body look so very 2024, underneath it all I still remain a simple woman who loves the traditions of her country and misses the way things used to be before the technology would squeeze the humanity out of people.
We cannot shed our origins and we cannot be separated from our cultural background no matter how much the fashion or the beauty industry try to make us feel like we have to constantly level up every day just to keep up with the Joneses.
