Parsing the material and the immaterial, it is the contemporary search for meaning, escape and self-discovery that becomes the lynchpin of Colours Of My Body by Lea Colombo. This introspective study of the sacred feminine calls upon centuries of artistic and spiritual practice, re-centring the artist’s physical body as the subject of a holistic master work.

By invoking the chromatic stages of the ‘Magnum opus’ in alchemy, from its nigredo blackening to the iosis of rubedo reddening, Colombo employs colour theory and its connection with emotion, evolution and one’s personal biogeometry as key concerns in this transformative exercise. Through her intuitive, near-mathematical approach, traditions of early photography meet philosophy, Tantric study, and the plastic arts. The deep vibration of Colombo’s spectral study reads elemental, in spurts of fiery orange and bloody red, crystalline shades of amethyst and emerald, ocean blues and washes of warm yellow.

Acknowledgement of the twin energies of the masculine and feminine abound, as Colombo examines her own physicality as a canvas for expression, its curves and musculature in a constant dialogue with colour and light. Notions of the female gaze blur in and out of focus, as the artist pushes further and further from the figurative form to create on a purely abstract plane. The body is layered with symbolism: distorted in chiaroscuro, solarized, fragmented and redrawn in wax crayon. Created through performative exercises of ‘light painting’, Colombo’s dark room prints weave in and out of formality: auras pulse around joints and concentric circles or flurries of inverted pyramids denote chakras and energy centres, activating strength and acknowledging fragility all at once.