Casting Call
Baltimore artist attacks social issues with life casting
By Matt Kelley
PUBLISHED: AUGUST 8, 2012

http://citypaper.com/arts/stage/casting-call-1.1355665


PHOTO: J.M. GIORDANO

Lania D'Agostino is in the people business but not in any traditional sense.

Life castings of figures like soldiers or athletes pay D'Agostino's bills and fund her personal projects.

D'Agostino pulls back the plastic, showing that each of the casts depicts a person in the process of gender transformation.

When D'Agostino began the project, she was surprised by how many people volunteered to model and even had to turn people away. She says that for the models, it is similar to coming out; it symbolizes a transition from their embarrassment of their bodies to pride in them. "These people are exposing themselves to a group of people for the first time, and some of them have never even been completely naked standing in front of their lover before," she says. "Here they are, having their bodies encapsulated, touched, and goop smeared all over them. Then, when it's done, they finally get to see an image of their body in a way they hadn't been able to before."