Heavenly Bodies

In the series Heavenly Bodies Karen Garrett de Luna combines intimate close-up portraits of the skin with ghostly overlaid astrological maps. The results are beautifully ephemeral compositions combining and highlighting the similarities in the the close and the distant.

"An attempt to navigate the landscape of the human body in relationship to the vastness of the night sky, Heavenly Bodies maps the visible to the invisible. These photo collages speak a secret language of symbols and connect the intimate to both the archetypal and the elemental. Unveiling the relations between the organic and the diagrammatic, Heavenly Bodies is a place where corporeal imperfections including freckles, scars and wrinkles, hint at a luminescent and transcendent beauty underneath the skin.

Presented in the negative, Heavenly Bodies aims to collapse microcosm and macrocosm into a single view by estranging what is familiar. The body of work sketches a self portrait by tracing the contours of my relationships with immediate family members. Operating in a spiritually hermetic space, Heavenly Bodies examines the idea of karma; I question what exactly have I inherited from my parents and what kind of exchange happens in my relationship with my beloved."

Karen Garrett de Luna, 2010
http://www.delunatic.net