24/11/2020
Six shades of pink. Why did you choose this color, Chiaraliki?
If I have to be honest, pink is a color that I never liked. My favorite color is red because I believe that it cannot be categorized as an exclusively female color. In fact, I never felt so feminine as others saw me.
I started to re-evaluate pink as a color when I started reading “Adventure Time” comics. There is a character, named Princess Bubblegum, who is entirely colored with different shades of pink. I find it simple and very sensual.
When I started creating my illustrations, I thought that the perfect color to express my erotic theme without being vulgar was just pink.
Who are the women you portrait within your art?
I started with depicting models that already had experience with posing photos or photographs of artists that I feel are very close to my style, and then get to take selfies and pose myself for my illustrations. For some months now, except for some collaboration, the girl you see in the illustrations is really Chiaraliki.
Where does your creative process start?
I don’t have a real creative process that I follow to the letter, I am of the zodiacal sign of Gemini so I am, unfortunately, a bit moody.
I do what I feel, so that in which moment it seems better and I like it better.
Sometimes it happens that, while I’m in the car, the words of a song strike me and I think about what illustration could come out of it.
Other times it is the situations I live that inspire me. Then there are those days when I pick up the phone, set the self-timer and start trying out poses with particular objects that I have at home like handcuffs, inflatable bananas or other (moreover, you know, the artists’ houses are always full of strange objects – I laugh).
Once selected the shot I go to work and start drawing. The rest comes by itself.
Often times your captions are poems or quotes form other artists. Chiaraliki, how do you select them?
Even for photo captions, I don’t have a fixed rule. There are times when I decide to write something, and sometimes when I ask people to help me. In the first months of this page I had opened a kind of competition aimed at those who wanted to write something for my captions.
The selection is not made on the person but on the writing, if I like the text and I believe that it is well and manages to give an extra edge to the illustration, I use it.
Basically when it comes to short stories, the theme is always erotic. When it comes to pills or other types of text instead, I try to combine creating allusive captions, which give an erotic background but in a veiled manner.
Recently you posted many short stories by Ruscio Centanni. How did this collaboration start?
I met @rusciocentanni through a friend we have in common, Ileana (@ileanasphoto), who has been my fan since day 0 (and she is also my super beautician!)
One day, while she was giving me a manicure she told me about this his friend a little “strange”, described as a Bukowski of 2019. He showed me his Instagram profile and his stories …
I could not ask him to start a collaboration. Together we have a project, which is still in an embryonic state, but which I want to continue. If you hear from us in a few months, maybe I’ll tell you more!
How did your passion for eroticism was born, and how would you define it?
Eroticism is imagination. It is the glue between the body, the verb and the thought.
It is to exalt and expand sexual impulses without going beyond the thin line between good and bad taste, between decency and indecency.
In my illustrations or captions I write I always try to put that pinch of malice that characterizes me.
When I discovered that I liked making allusions (and I could do it well) I decided that I had to do something to express these emotions. I wanted to find something that could give vent to my imagination and that could excite me. And what better way than drawing?
What I want to leave to the public that looks at my illustrations is this, the pleasure of being able to imagine and travel with fantasy.
What has been your greatest struggle in sharing your art online?
I assume that I did not expect all this interest in my creations. Let’s say that I started without having great expectations and goals to reach.
I didn’t want and I want nothing more than to get to people for what I am, I don’t care anyway.
Following a bit the unpleasant events that had the “colleagues” who have pages of erotic art, I knew that the first big monster to defeat would have been the censorship, dictated purely by ignorance.
As I said before, I find myself facing an issue that is still a taboo for our society. Everyone thinks about sex, everyone has erotic fantasies but talking about it is not allowed. I fight against all this, I fight for freedom of thought, for freedom of expression, for freedom in all its forms.
Discover more on Chiaraliki @chiaraliki.art – www.chiaralikiart.com
