/130 x 100 x 5 cm, 11.100 industrial nails, acrylic paint/
Renaissance is the first work in my series Female R-evolution. It is a conceptual piece inspired by the life and courage of Nadia Murad, human rights activist, ISIS survivor, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Her story marked me deeply. Nadia lived through unthinkable violence: the genocide of her family and her Yazidi community in Kocho, Iraq, and her own captivity under the so-called Islamic State. She was forced into sexual slavery, endured brutality, and yet survived. She found the strength not only to escape, but to speak. Her testimony is not only a personal act of resilience, but also a collective one. It is an insistence that such crimes must be seen, remembered, and confronted. I chose to portray her because I wanted her story to inhabit form, to become a presence that asks for reflection.
In shaping this piece, I turned to Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with the Ermine. I dressed Nadia in the guise of that portrait, not as imitation, but as inversion. In da Vinci’s time, the ermine symbolized purity. Here, it becomes an act of restoration, a symbolic return of what was violently taken from her. The dove on her shoulder carries a similar weight, it is a messenger of peace, but also a reminder that her spirit, her inner purity, remained untouched by the violence done to her body. Her soul endured. And that endurance is rare and deeply human.
I chose the title Renaissance because it speaks to rebirth. For me, this piece is about reclaiming dignity, restoring voice, and affirming the possibility of renewal after devastation.
/100 x 100 x 5 cm, 6.500 industrial nails, acrylic paint/
Baroque is the second work in my Female R-Evolution series. It portrays Waris Dirie, Somali model, author, actress, and tireless activist in the fight against female genital mutilation. Her story, like her presence, carries both grace and defiance.
For this portrait, I turned to Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. In the original, the sitter was an anonymous European girl, unmarked by history, her identity lost to time. In my version, her place is taken by Waris. The gesture is deliberate: to rewrite the past, to set into the frame of art history a woman whose life and work continue to shape the present.
Waris is Black, African, and a survivor. By placing her within a canonical masterpiece, I wanted to highlight the absence of such figures in the history of painting, and to return visibility where it has long been denied. This is not imitation, but restoration—a symbolic act of giving voice, dignity, and presence to those who have always belonged in the story of humanity.
/100 x 100 x 5 cm, 12.120 industrial nails, acrylic paint/
Timeless is the third and final work in my Female R-Evolution series. It portrays Hedy Lamarr, a woman often remembered only for her beauty, as one of MGM’s shining stars during the “Golden Age” of cinema. Yet behind the glamour was an inventor whose mind shaped the future. Alongside her acting career, she co-developed frequency-hopping technology, the foundation of today’s Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS.
In this portrait, I chose to reimagine Lamarr not in the past, but in the realm of the heroic. I cast her as Captain Marvel, a modern icon of strength and wonder. The gesture is symbolic: while my earlier works placed living women into historical masterpieces, here I reversed the approach. Hedy, who is no longer with us, is projected forward—immortalized as a timeless figure, radiant not only in beauty but in intellect and innovation.
Timeless is a tribute to a woman whose legacy defies era and expectation. It affirms that true greatness lies not in appearance, but in the endurance of ideas, and in the power to transform how we live and connect across generations.
/100 x 100 x 5 cm, 11.000 industrial nails, acrylic paint/
Nomad is my personal tribute to Ricardo Bofill Leví, the Catalan architect whose vision reshaped the language of postmodernism. Founder of the Taller de Arquitectura in 1963, he transformed it into one of the most influential practices of the century. His works—monumental yet poetic—stand today as landmarks of imagination. As historian Andrew Ayers noted, they rank among the most impressive creations of the 20th century.
For this portrait, I drew inspiration from Jan van Eyck’s Man with a Red Turban. I replaced the sitter’s face with that of Bofill, placing him within a lineage of artistic masters. Yet beyond homage, the piece seeks to capture his nomadic spirit, his restless search for form, space, and meaning.
To honor him, I quite literally stepped into his shoes. I walked his buildings in and around Barcelona, carrying his presence with me, allowing his architecture to guide the portrait. Nomad is not only an image of Bofill, but also a journey through the landscapes he left behind. A reminder that architecture, like life, is a path traced by movement, memory, and vision.
/100 x 100 x 5 cm, 12.500 industrial nails, acrylic paint/
Vir Fortis (Latin for “hero, a strong man”) is dedicated to Phill Wilson, African-American activist and founder of the Black AIDS Institute. His path in activism began in the early 1980s, after both he and his partner were diagnosed with HIV. From that moment on, his life became a voice for visibility, justice, and community, transforming silence into collective strength.
This portrait is part of my ongoing series devoted to inspirational figures. For Phill Wilson, I turned to Caravaggio’s Young Sick Bacchus. In that image of fragility and illness, I found a frame through which to speak of Wilson’s courage. By placing his likeness into the painting, I wanted to capture the paradox at the heart of his story: vulnerability turned into resilience, suffering transformed into action.
Vir Fortis is not only homage, but recognition. It is a reminder that true heroism is not the absence of struggle, but the strength to rise through it, to carry others forward, and to turn personal battles into a force for change.
