SCAR TISSUE
This body of work reimagines the car beyond its associations with function, speed and masculinity, framing it instead as a site of seduction, fragility, and care. Working with salvaged car panels, the approach treats them as sculptural surfaces already inscribed with histories of movement and impact.
By engaging with the language of automotive aesthetics, it blurs boundaries between the industrial and the delicate, the erotic and the emotional. The car becomes a metaphor for the body itself, desired, marked and redefined through touch and care.
Alessia Catalano is a Naarm/Melbourne-based artist whose practice explores the intersection of memory, desire and material transformation. Working primarily with painting and found automotive surfaces, her work reimagines the car as a site of seduction and femininity, challenging its traditional associations with masculinity.
Her practice is informed by themes of nostalgia, emotion, and care often merging mechanical structures with delicate, ornamental gestures. Through this interplay of softness and strength, she reflects on the ways material and memory intertwine, revealing how objects of progress and desire can also carry intimacy.
