Collection: Manuela Benaim
Caracas, Venezuela – based in Barcelona
The Altar
For The Eighth Day exhibition, Manuela engages with the theme of motherhood a deeply personal and meaningful subject in her work.
Manuela Benaim
Manuela Benaim is a multidisciplinary artist whose work centers on the human body as both subject and material. She delves into intimate, vulnerable, and often unspoken experiences that shape the collective yet deeply personal human condition.
A key element of her practice is the creation of artificial skins made from silicone, meticulously replicating the unique features of each individual. These sculptures form the foundation for her explorations across various media, including altered objects, performance, dance, and photography.
Manuela’s work challenges conventional notions of identity, presenting it as something both stable and transformable. Her investigation of gender frames it as a fluid, malleable social construct “just like rubber,” she explains that can stretch, reshape, and expand. Through this, she invites viewers to rethink the physical and conceptual boundaries of their own bodies.
Using silicone, human hair, and pigment, she recreates the outer surface of a body at a specific moment, capturing transient details much like a photograph. Her life-casting process involves molding silicone on a live model, followed by painstakingly painting the skin and implanting each hair individually.
What truly distinguishes Manuela’s work is her conceptual approach to individual body parts—not merely creating commissions or projects, but developing profound ideas around elements such as lips used as stamps, belly buttons as mirrors, or nipples hung on chains. This conceptual depth adds a poetic and provocative layer to her practice.
She has collaborated with over fifty volunteers from diverse ethnicities, ages, body types, and backgrounds.