From the Body to the Word was conceived as part of my degree thesis in Painting, developed within the field of Artistic Anatomy. The project began with the body as the first territory of human knowledge: a living structure observed, measured, fragmented and translated into signs.
At the centre of the research is the idea of metamorphosis—the transformation of the visible body into an abstract language, and of gesture into writing. I traced this passage through the history of Slavic scripts, looking at the gradual transformation of ancient pictograms into increasingly stylised signs, and from these early forms towards the letters of the Glagolitic alphabet and, subsequently, the Cyrillic alphabet.
The project explores writing not simply as a system of communication, but as a form of embodied memory. Before the letter becomes a conventional symbol, it is gesture: a movement of the hand, a trace left on a surface, an attempt to give shape to something that exists within the body and the mind. The written sign therefore retains something of its corporeal origin, even after centuries of abstraction and codification.
From the Body to the Word: Metamorphosis of the Sign in Slavic Scripts is the title of my Master’s research project at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, supervised by Professor Paolo Belgioioso.
I was particularly interested in the moment in which an image ceases to be an image and becomes a sign. A body, a hand, an animal, an object or a natural form can gradually lose its figurative identity and be reduced to a few essential lines. Through this process of simplification, representation becomes language.
The Glagolitic alphabet became a particularly fertile field of investigation. Its complex, almost organic forms seem to occupy a threshold between image and letter, between drawing and writing. In the later development of Cyrillic, the signs become increasingly integrated into a more systematic alphabetic structure, yet the memory of the gesture remains embedded within their forms.
My artistic research followed this evolution in reverse as well as forward: from body to sign, from sign to letter, and from letter back to body. Anatomical fragments, gestures and lines become visual equivalents of letters, while letters themselves return to the realm of drawing, losing their purely linguistic function and becoming images once again.
In this sense, From the Body to the Word is not a study of the history of writing alone. It is an investigation into the primordial relationship between the body, the hand and the act of naming—between what is seen and what can be inscribed.
The project considers writing as a form of metamorphosis: the transformation of matter into memory, gesture into symbol, and image into language
From flesh to gesture, from gesture to sign, from sign to word.
Before language was written, it was embodied.
A movement of the hand became a trace; the trace became an image; the image gradually became a sign.
From the Body to the Word is an investigation into this primordial transformation—the passage from the living body to the abstract language of writing. Developed as part of my degree thesis in Painting, within the field of Artistic Anatomy, the project brings together anatomical drawing and the evolution of Slavic scripts, following the metamorphosis of the sign from ancient pictograms to the stylised forms of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets.
The research investigates the poetic and symbolic evolution of visual signs, tracing an imaginative path from primordial pictograms to the emergence of the Glagolitic alphabet, the oldest known Slavic writing system. Rather than approaching writing as a purely linguistic structure, the project considers it as a living organism born from images, gestures, and the human need to transform experience into meaning.
I began with the body as the first alphabet: a landscape of lines, structures, rhythms and gestures. Through drawing, the body is fragmented and translated; its organic forms become marks, its movements become traces. Anatomy therefore becomes not only a study of physical structure, but a way of understanding how the visible world can be transformed into language.
The research then moves towards the origins of Slavic writing. Ancient pictorial signs gradually lose their direct relationship with the objects they represent. They are simplified, abstracted and transformed until the image becomes a symbol. In the Glagolitic alphabet, this transformation appears with particular intensity: the letters retain a striking visual and almost corporeal presence, suspended between drawing and writing, image and abstraction.
With the emergence of Cyrillic, the signs become increasingly codified, entering a more systematic linguistic structure. Yet beneath the convention of the alphabet remains the memory of the gesture—the movement of the hand that once created the mark.
This transition fascinated me as a painter because it occupies the very threshold between image and language. A line can represent a body, but it can also cease to represent it and become a letter. A letter can communicate a sound, but it can also return to being an image, a rhythm, an autonomous visual form.
The work therefore follows a circular movement rather than a linear evolution:
body → gesture → image → sign → letter → word
and then back again:
word → letter → sign → image → body.
In this continuous metamorphosis, writing becomes a form of drawing, while drawing approaches the condition of writing.
The project reflects on the deep relationship between the corporeal and the symbolic: how human beings have always attempted to leave a trace of themselves in the world, transforming movement into memory and experience into signs.
The body is the first territory we inhabit.
The hand is its first instrument of inscription.
The sign is its first trace.
And the word is perhaps the body, transformed into memory.
The metamorphosis of the sign unfolds through a dreamlike visual process in which symbolic forms gradually evolve into letters, preserving traces of their original figurative identity. In this perspective, writing becomes both image and memory, bridging the physical body, collective consciousness, and cultural heritage.
The project reflects my enduring interest in the relationship between symbolism, language, and visual transformation, exploring how images can become words while retaining their poetic and archetypal power.