Felipe Corcione
FASCINUM/ winged phalus
From the beginning, I started to work with a very personal narrative, where I intended to explore my gender and sexuality, as a way to understand myself in the social context. I start my work by dealing with representational and symbolic imagery of being a homosexual male. My work was changing as myself, until now in my recent work where I identify as a pansexual non-binary human.
Sexuality and gender identification in our society are still, mainly in Brasil, taboo, and a serious discussion topic. Thus, discussing sexuality and gender is a way to protest, demystify and develop a conversation about this way of being alive.
So I started to explore the symbology of the winged phallus, an imagery that was present in my teens and an exploratory comic representation that started as a simple drawing. At the university it became a whole project during my young adulthood, exploring the context of these symbols and demystifying its symbolic association with the male superiority and indisputable space of straight in the male spectrum. These series were made of ceramic and feathers. Named after its symbolic name, Fascinum is a series of winged phallus that was projected out of the wall, in comic-style marks made in iron, representing its movement while flying. They were extremely carnivalesque, as paradise birds, as an allusion to the flamboyant aspect of being a gay male.
