We read images through the stories already inside our heads. Subtitled Bodies is a painting project that makes this visible.

The project starts from cinematic and advertising fragments, close-ups, gestures, moments where emotional intensity is concentrated in a single frame. I translate these into hyperrealistic paintings that isolate the body and slow down the mechanisms of image consumption.

Subtitles are then introduced as interventions. The same painted figure, paired with different lines of text, produces entirely different emotional readings. What the image means shifts depending on what the subtitle says. The work exposes a mechanism that operates constantly in visual culture: narrative frames determine what we feel before we have the chance to look freely.

The subtitle does not describe the image. It tells us what to feel about it. And most of the time, we do not notice the difference.