The Bride

For this series I found my inspiration in Leonardo da Vinci's painting called Salvator Mundi. I felt that Elio who is portrayed in this series had such a striking resemblance to the Jezus of Leonardo. Elio is a graduated behavioral scientist and sexual consultant in training for people with a mental disability. He is an online influencer and wants to inspire others to become truly themselves, in whatever form or way they see fit. Free of what society thinks people should be. He inspires others by openly talking about things that hurt, excite, trouble or happen to him. Common subjects are lgbtqia+ rights, gender normativity, hetero normativity, mental health and the loss of his family due to their religious beliefs. He tries to inspire others by showing the beauty of genderbending the binary gender norms in fashion and openly talking about his experience. He gets called names daily but he truly believes in the following sentence: “If you’re not yourself, then who are you?” Elio got married to his husband last August this year, but due to Covid-19 the circumstances of this wedding were far from what he had wished for. After visiting Amsterdam Fashion Week some years ago, he knew who would be the designer of his wedding dress. He had everything designed and planned for the perfect wedding. Due to the pandemic and the following restrictions, there were only few people allowed. He and his husband decided to go ahead with the wedding, making sure that everyone would be safe. But then they were "thrown out" of the fairytale castle in Belgium where the ceremony was going to take place by an administrator of the municipality. They immediately moved everything and everyone to a public place in Amsterdam and that's where they married. On top of that disappointment, he lost half his friends because of their disapproval of him proceeding with the wedding despite the pandemic. Elio is very much at ease with his feminine side. Like every other bride he wanted this wedding to be an unforgettable and special day. But it turned into a memorable day for all the wrong reasons. It fills him with sadness and grief. In this series I portrayed him as the saddened, grieving bride that tries to come to grips with the situation. As Elio spreads the word for a gender free world, he is also a Salvator.