Mohave S12 by Fede Bianchi

Medium: Archival pigment print on Metallic Paper

Dimensions: 60.96 x 60.96 cm

Year: 2025

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.