Francesco D'Isa & Pornsaints: Homage to Porn Stars?
Posted at 6:17 PM Jun 06, 2008
Pornsaints bills itself as "an artistic approach to porn, a pornographic approach to art, a pornoartistic approach to religion." This mission manifests itself in often surrealistic digital manipulations of photographs of porn stars. The images are mostly offered up by the porn performers themselves, and the Pornsaints site also offers up interviews with the ladies they feature. Francesco D'Isa is the main brain behind the project - the Italian artist has since brought other artists into the fold, on June 14th he'll be launching the first physical gallery show of the work, at Galerie Zero in Berlin, Germany.
Naked City editor Audacia Ray (who was porn sainted by artist Japi Honoo in 2007) had some questions for Francesco about the inspirations for the project as well as the distopian aesthetic of many of the images.
Audacia Ray: What kind of work did you focus on before you started Pornsaints. As an artist, what attracts you to making art featuring porn stars?
Francesco D'Isa: I've always worked with female forms as a medium for my art. I often used softcore/porn pictures as reference when I was at my very beginning. I think that to feature porn stars in my art is a natural step in my artistic path.
Three more questions and their answers (plus more images) after the jump.
AR: Why did you decide to lay on religious overtones to the project? Why elect porn performers to sainthood?
FD'I: I wrote a whole essay about this, you an read it at www.pornsaints.org [ed: the site has frames, so to read it you have to go to "about us" and then scroll to the link] if you like. To be brief, I think that ascesis and excess have something in common in their roots. In the pornsaints essay, my definition of a saint is mainly philosophical, inspired by many religious concepts and beliefs. It's closer to Mystic and Oriental definitions (Taoism most of all) more than canonic Christan. Briefly, if God is the most unreachable and inhuman concept like I think it is, the saint, in character of human being closer to God, renounces to his/her humans features and identity. A cool separation from the world like an extreme behavior and participation are one way to overstep humanity. Raskolnikov like a pornstar tries this way. It's a painful way - like the ascetic one as well. Like I wrote in the essay "...the pornsaint dwells in the house of the saints, but got there traveling a different way, and came in knocking at another door. If the saint, in a way, obtained the absolute by clambering up on God (any God), the pornsaint obtained it climbing over man. His way doesn't go through renouncing the world of man in favor of the world of God, but through the utmost simultaneous participation in opposite aspects of the human world...". In a few worlds, extremes can coincide (a pornstar and an ascetic, a killer and an holy man) in the attempt to reach the coincidence of opposites (God). But as I wrote: "...this doesn't mean (quite obviously) that each and every porn actor is a pornsaint – for what we know, they're simply pornstars. Pornsaints might not even actually exist, but what interests us is that they might exist, and how they might exist."
AR:Many of the Pornsaints images are slightly distopic or have mechanical elements in them – at any rate, the images overall don't idealize the experience of being a porn star, though many of them make the pornsaints look really stunning. This is kind of a heavy/weird question, but here goes anyway: what kind of symbolism do you 
think exists for porn stars, as they are public entities and also sexual subjects?
FD'I: In my opinion, you hit the centre of a very important issue. Pornsaints doesn't idealize the porn stars work and obviously doesn't blame it. Porn stars have an important role in our world, I mean a symbolic role. They are our extreme, well-known stars, the dark side under the flood lights. We portray porn stars as in the past artists portrayed queens, ladies and saints.
We don't make porn, we make artworks. Porn stars live in the Pornsaints Church in another role: they are models for artworks. Every artists from our collective is free to interpret the model in a completely new and different way. At Pornsaints porn stars act in an art studio. We try to undress their souls, not their bodies.
AR:Tell me a bit about your upcoming show in Berlin. What kind of space will the work be showing in? Who do you hope will come to see the art work?
FD'I: The show will be at Zero Galerie, (Galerie Zero, Köpenicker Strasse 4, 10997 Berlin). 
ZERO.project is a meeting place, exchange platform and a Gallery in Berlin with a focus point on Eastern Europe. At the same time ZERO is a network and a journalist office. The
third area of interest is architecture, with specialisation environmental design. ZERO is a neutral start-point, a beginning of creating something new, a cooperation to bring together both, the Eastern and the Western European cultures.
This art show is for art enthusiasts, sex workers or fans, but not only. It's not an erotic art show, even if it feature porn stars. Our Pornsaints are rarely naked. Porn has a deep meaning in our society and art usually plays with deep and "scandalous" meanings. This is not a scandalous exhibition, this is just art, so I suppose it's for everyone.
Art work credits from top to bottom: on invitation - Anna the Nerd by Francesco D'Isa, Dana DeArmond by Ida Belogi, Stoya by Francesco D'Isa. All images pictured will be featured in Berlin, Sabina Leigh by Marguerite Sauvage.
Thank you Audacia for your interview, it was a pleasure to answer your questions.
Posted by: Francesco D'Isa at June 7, 2008 11:36 AM
