Savaged by sex: Naked Silhouette Alphabet by Anastasia Mastrakouli.

The entire alphabet.

A Greek artist, Anastasia Mastrakouli from Corfu, has created an alphabet from silhouettes of a naked person to draw attention to the relationship between anatomy and visual art.

As a vehicle to carry a message the work is very successful, but there is far more to consider in the relationship of people and their bodies.

I suppose the first point to note is that the alphabet created is English. This suggests that the work is for consumption by a particular group of observers outside her native Greece.

She also explores the erotic suspense of the naked female form using the notion of a steamy glass screen behind which the action is taking place. Oh, to peek behind the screen, is the natural if unspoken refrain. The populist notion of such an idea puts us off-guard.

But then the abstracted shape of the letters, imperfectly formed, need interpretation and that causes us to look closely at the shape behind the letter. Would anybody be able to read a text written in this alphabet?

So we look closer... and at a certain point an embarrassment comes upon us as we told ourselves that we were interrogating the images for the sake of art. But we stand, caught in the trap so beautifully set by the artist, exposed from the flimsy cover of society's tacit agreement to couch our animal instincts in the higher, more noble cause of art, exposed in our eternal pursuit of self gratification. Savaged by that we thought civilised to study.

At the time this work was created the artist was a student at Ionian University.

a

b

c

d

e

f

g

h

i

j

k

l

m

n

o

p

q

r

s

t

u

v

w

x

y

Gratitude to Behance.