Sofia Cianciulli

I am an Italian multidisciplinary artist based in the US, and I use my body

as both subject and medium to reshape perceptions of female identity in a

digital world. Growing up in Florence, immersed in Renaissance art, I was

constantly exposed to idealized portrayals of the female form. Coupled with

my family’s deep roots in the traditional fashion manufacturing industry,

these images fostered conflicting narratives about femininity, identity, and

self-worth. My conservative upbringing imposed ideals of behavior and

presentation, which I began challenging when I moved to London at 17.

There, a city defined by cultural diversity and individualism, I grappled

with societal standards of beauty and success. This journey toward self-

expression and self-discovery led me to question the intersection of

femininity, body commodification, and digital culture. The rise of social

media intensified this tension, turning the female body into both a tool and

a product—manipulated and consumed by the masses in a relentless cycle of

self-curation.

My artistic practice is informed by the feminist art movement of the 1970s,

where artists like Marina Abramovic, Valie Export, and Yoko Ono used their

bodies to reclaim agency over female representation. In a contemporary

digital landscape, my work seeks to recontextualize the female form,

addressing themes of identity manipulation, body commodification, and

societal expectations. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok, with their

decentralized imagery, have transformed identity into performance—governed by

algorithms and rewarded by likes. Women, particularly, are caught in the

crossroads of this visual economy, where beauty and desirability are

commodities constantly bought and sold.

In my paintings, I challenge distorted representations of women in media by

offering raw, unfiltered interpretations. Inspired by Yves Klein's

Anthropometries, I use my body to create imprints that reflect the tension

between vulnerability and power, deeply personal yet universally resonant.

Cyberpunk literature further influences my work, particularly themes of human

nature and dystopian reality, exploring the evolving relationship between

humans and machines. For example, works like 'Animal', and 'Glitch' question

evolutions blurred line, drawing from Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto and

Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus. This pieces examines our growing dependence on

technology and the shift of power, where the machines have become alive, and

humans are the still objects. In Hidden Identity, I interrogate the concept

of 'ghost in the shell, in other words - individual’s consciousness, shaped

by unseen algorithms and data systems that subtly dominate modern life.

Through my art, I aim to create a space for authentic self-expression,

confronting the contradictions of womanhood in the digital age. My work is a

dialogue between the personal and the collective, the human and the machine,

the past and the present.