Cartographer of My Body

Cartographer of My Body
36 X 48 Inches

Materiality: Acrylic On Canvas, Ceramic and Porcelain Clay, Modeled Paste, Textured Paste, Ink Markers, Gold Leaf, Glaze, Sponge and Oil Pastel.

"Cartographer of My Body" is a large self-portrait that rejects traditional representation. It is a map of extreme folds and textures, layers of different clay, molding, and crackling paste defining an imperfect body.

A body of pain, aches, memories of the men I let use my body to feel any type of presence—to fill my emotional void. Discomfort. Body dysphoria. The struggle of finding a binary in a world of constant binaries and labels overflowing. One side of the torso is proportionally larger than the other, echoing the asymmetry of the persona. I’m uneven.

I am cracked by the trauma, yet I am still standing. I am still there. I was touched, used, drained, emptied, stepped on, filled, and tossed away, yet there is life growing in the cracks.

She’s not dead. She refuses to die. Life is a burden to her, but the human experience and Mother Nature’s love—the flowers weighing on her breast, the beauty between the grace of age through the stretch marks on her fat bitch ethereal body.

Grass, greenery, and the moon are tides that guide her shell. The soul moves the machine with a beating heart forever imprinted by a strong woman. By strong women she’s surrounded. Her mother ripped open her stomach to give me birth.

I was a C-section baby, a cord-weird, but I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. You are looking at the naked body that I stare at in the mirror every day—the body that lets me experience light, night, day. She’s a sculpture. I’m a fucking work of art.

I’m not perfect. I have a hairy chest. I don’t take HRT, but I am still a woman. Beautiful yet poisonous, I am a delectable poison. Admire me from afar and take me in slowly. Perhaps you’ll be immune to the poison and see the Garden of Eve.

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Statement of Value: Cartographer of My Body
Artist: Maii Michaella Miatti Fallara
Title: Cartographer of My Body
Dimensions: 36 x 48 inches
Price: $15,000.00

Materiality & Technical Sophistication
This work is a high-complexity mixed-media construction that transcends the traditional canvas. The valuation accounts for the archival nature of the materials used to map the artist's form:

Structural Relief: The body is sculpted using a combination of Ceramic and Porcelain Clay, Modeled Paste, and Textured Paste, creating a tactile topography of the "extreme folds" and "cracked trauma" described by the artist.

Surface Artistry: The interplay of Acrylic, Oil Pastel, and Ink Markers allows for a nuanced exploration of skin, stretch marks, and greenery.

Elevated Accents: The inclusion of Gold Leaf and Glaze provides a "museum-grade" finish, highlighting the "ethereal" nature of the subject amidst the pain.

Methodology: Applied through diverse techniques involving Sponges and manual molding, the piece represents a full month of intensive physical labor and emotional processing.

Philosophical Rationale
The price of $15,000 serves as a boundary and a declaration. As a central piece in the FLORA: Archives des Fleurs, Je Me Souviens project, it acts as a permanent record of a Black trans woman’s survival and her refusal to die or be simplified into a binary.

The work is a "delectable poison" that demands to be taken in slowly. The valuation ensures that the "true owner" is one who recognizes the work not as a decorative object, but as a living sculpture of a "fucking work of art" that has survived being used, drained, and emptied. It is an investment in a narrative of radical visibility and the "beauty between the grace of age".