Mohave S12 by Fede Bianchi
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Archival pigment print on Metallic Paper
Dimensions: 60.96 x 60.96 cm
Edition production year: 2025
Edition of 15
Price: $2500.00 USD
Status: available
Mohave S12 from the series 💢 Deprived 💢 Inspired by pre-Columbus Indigenous body art, this work tries to bring awareness of the extreme deprivation the original peoples have been suffering for the last centuries. Their glowing energy transcends the invisible subjects through the infinite and universal space of the body mandalas in an attempt to rescue the brightness and fluorescence of these civilizations. Technique: Hand-painted UV-reactive body paint is applied directly onto the model using patterns inspired by Indigenous/pre-Columbian body art. The image is photographed in a dark studio under controlled UV/blacklight so the pigment fluoresces while the human figure recedes into near-invisibility. In post-production, I deepen the surrounding blacks, remove any ambient light spill, and preserve the authentic glow of the paint. For the “body mandala” compositions, multiple photographs of the painted body are then composited—with sacred geometry rotations—to create a symmetrical, radiating structure where the pattern becomes both presence and message. Story: Mohave - Mojave In the 16th Century, the time the Spanish arrived in the territory, the Mojaves were the largest concentration of people in the Southwest of today’s USA. The Mojaves wore facial tattoos and also painted their faces and bodies for special occasions. They used different colors and patterns for war paint, religious ceremonies, and festive decoration. The dramatic population loss at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries was due to disease and poverty stemming from their subjugation by the U.S. government in 1859. First White Contact was with Spanish explorers in 1604, but from that time until the 1820s the Mohave remained relatively free from and unchanged by European influences. In the 1820s European-American trappers and traders entered the Mohave country, and their encounters with the Mohave were violent. In 1858 They were relocated to the Colorado Indian Reservation, established in 1867, and the Fort Mohave Indian Reservation, established in 1880. During the nineteenth Century the Mohave engaged in a long period of warfare with their enemies, which came to an end when they were defeated by the Pima and Maricopa in 1857.
Why collect this work?
Mohave S12 turns repeated, painted bodies into a radial emblem, but its strict symmetry holds bodily difference and cultural reference at a troubling distance.
- Bianchi’s profile links his visual practice to earlier audiovisual work and an interest in rhythm, repetition, and sequencing. Here, those concerns organize the body less as an individual presence than as a modular unit.
- Against the black field, twelve outward-facing figures circle a dense center. Concentric markings make torsos resemble watchful eyes, while pale limbs and heads puncture the perimeter, shifting perception between human assembly, flower, and many-eyed creature.
- The artist reports using UV-reactive body paint, blacklight photography, darkened post-production, and rotated composites. Printed with archival pigment on metallic paper, this documented combination may heighten the separation between luminous pattern and receding body.
- The stated reference to Mojave and broader pre-Columbian body art is not culturally specific enough to verify from the image. That gap makes the work pertinent to discussions of how geometric beauty can abstract Indigenous practices while claiming to commemorate dispossession.
About the Artist
Fede Bianchi
Fede Bianchi is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: photography. Based in Miami, United States.
Nationality: Argentine
My practice navigates the space between symmetry and chaos, exploring how order, emotion, and meaning emerge through visual experience.
