ABOUT
The Feel PODEROSA project is an artistic initiative and experience created by Chiara Mecozzi focused on using her photography and painting to inspire and empower women of all cultures, social classes, and ages to love and feel empowered in their bodies, accept who they are physically and emotionally, embrace vulnerability, live with self-love and compassion, and celebrate their individuality.
Chiara Mecozzi is an Argentine-American fine artist who specializes in mixed media paintings and photographs. From an early age she was exposed to the artist’s life through her mother Miriam Costanza, a prominent geometric abstract painter. Growing up in an artist’s studio, Chiara developed skills and a curiosity for the Arts that led her to pursue an education in the field. After graduating from Florida International University with a bachelor’s degree in Art History and a minor in Fine Arts, she began her career as a painter and photographer.
Mecozzi’s art is distinguished by its expression of the female body as a channel for empowerment, liberation, and personal transformation. Her inspiration stems from her individual experiences and those of the women she photographs exploring the difficulties that women face with their own shame and the pressures of contemporary society, specifically with regard to body image, self-worth, and body representation.
In her paintings, Mecozzi frequently portrays nude women, but transcends conventional concepts of sensuality and objectification. Rather, Mecozzi’s work depicts the female body as a channel of expression of strength and liberation, challenging cultural constraints and reshaping our understanding of vulnerability and what it means to be a woman in today's world.
Through her photographic juxtapositions –mostly overlays of women on found objects and spaces– Mecozzi creates personal narratives that represent different subjects in her life, among them identity of the self and the celebration of women and the body. She builds an intricate storyline that the viewer must piece together, and whose underlying statement reads, “we are much more than the external world.”
Mecozzi lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
“In a world filled with constant distractions and external noise, I seek to capture the viewer's attention and inspire introspection. Through my work, I aim to foster a deep connection between the viewer and their inner self, igniting a sense of empowerment and heightened awareness of their body. I believe in the power of vulnerability and reconnection to the body as a means of discovering and tapping into one's inner strength.” -Chiara Mecozzi
My story
So I decided to trigger those thoughts by photographing myself naked. It was probably one of the hardest things I’ve done.
Every photograph I took of myself allowed me to break free from all the social conditioning, limiting beliefs, and shame I had and believed for so long. Facing the photographs, allowed me to rewrite the story I had been telling myself my whole life. The more I photographed myself, the more those thoughts got triggered and the more conscious I became of my power over them.
And so I took it a step further, I grabbed those photographs and painted myself. I remember after I stepped back from the first painting of my naked body, I experienced something I hadn’t felt my whole life. I felt love. I felt compassion. I felt liberated. I felt beautiful, and I felt worthy.
By simply letting go and accepting myself, my vulnerability, and my body, I felt empowered, I felt powerful - PODEROSA.
I continued this practice for 10 month unable to stop. During that time, I experienced a profound shift in my relationship with myself. I felt liberated, free from shame and judgment, and able to fully be myself.
That was when my life changed. I started living in tune with my body, listening to its needs and desires, instead of reacting to my negative thoughts. The more I embraced this way of living, the more connected I felt to the world around me. I began attracting experiences and people that were meant for me, and my life started to make sense.
This journey of self-love and acceptance has transformed my life in ways I never thought possible.
And now, I am living in full alignment with my purpose in this world, to use my art as a channel and tool to help inspire, liberate and empower as many women as possible.
Throughout my entire life, I had a very unhealthy relationship with my body and myself. I have always sought external validation not only for the way I looked, but also for who I was. I was always trying to please everyone and put my worth in everyone else but me. Because of it, I ended up in a sexually abusive relationship and other very unhealthy relationships that only disconnected me from my body and myself. I completely gave up on myself. I lived for over 20 years, seeing myself from the eyes of others and for others, and I was never enough.
One day, going through my divorce, I hit rock bottom. In that moment, I felt I had nothing else to loose. I was faced with a choice, and I decided I couldn’t live like that anymore. I decided I wanted to figure out how to love myself, understand why I never had the power to say no and set boundaries. In that moment, I made a decision to figure out who I was.
I embarked on a journey to learn how to love myself. For two years, I dedicated myself to learning about trauma, self-love and compassion, vulnerability, sexual abuse, and divorce, I read countless amounts of books and journaled everyday and began disentangled and finding clarity within myself. I started to face shadows and past traumas, and releasing them.
As I was doing all this work, I realized that my relationship with my body was still something that kept getting in the way of my life. I still felt a lot of hate towards it, I shamed it every time I saw myself in the mirror. One day coming out of the shower and catching myself saying something negative, I decided I no longer wanted to listen to that toxic voice in my head. I realized that I had the power over those thoughts, that if every time they would come up I would dismiss them instead of reacting to them, I could change the way I saw myself.
