Press & Media
Press Kit
Skin and Grace
Book & Documentary – Fall 2026
Artfineline Announces SKIN and Grace
A photographic book by Igor Mattio
New York, NY —
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Skin and Grace is a long-term photographic and documentary project developed in Cuba, centered on young professional ballet dancers navigating a society shaped by deeply rooted codes of masculinity. Through still images and film, the project explores grace not as performance, but as a state of being: fragile, instinctive, and quietly resistant.
Rather than focusing on discipline or virtuosity, Skin and Grace observes moments where the body softens, hesitates, opens, and becomes human beyond choreography. It is a work about vulnerability inside strength, and beauty inside contradiction.
The project unfolds as both a photobook and a 60-minute documentary film, released together in Fall 2026.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I am not interested in photographing dancers as symbols of perfection. I am interested in the moment when perfection dissolves and something honest appears.
In Cuba, ballet exists inside a cultural structure where masculinity is often rigid, guarded, and codified. Within that framework, these young men carry grace in their bodies almost involuntarily. It is something that escapes control. Something that cannot be fully disciplined.
Skin and Grace is about that tension: between what is expected and what emerges naturally.
Between strength and softness.
Between form and vulnerability.
The camera is not there to observe excellence. It is there to witness presence.
— Igor Mattio
ABOUT THE BOOK
Title: Skin and Grace
Format: Hardcover photobook
Release: Fall 2026
Content: Black & white and color photographs
Focus: Portraiture, body, intimacy, environment, quiet gesture
The book unfolds as a visual narrative rather than a documentary report. It follows the dancers across different spaces: schools, abandoned architectures, domestic interiors, and natural landscapes. The sequencing favors silence over explanation, allowing the body and gaze to construct meaning.
The images resist spectacle. They insist on proximity.
ABOUT THE FILM
Format: 60-minute documentary film
Release: Fall 2026
The film extends Skin and Grace into sound, voice, and dialogue. It is structured around four intimate interviews with the dancers and a final shared conversation between the dancers and the photographer, where the project itself becomes the subject.
It combines:
Observational footage
Four in-depth personal interviews
A final collective dialogue
Staged visual sequences
Behind-the-scenes moments
Rather than explaining, the film listens. The interviews are not confessional in a traditional sense, but quiet, reflective spaces where the dancers speak about their bodies, discipline, desire, fear, masculinity, and grace. The final dialogue opens the process, allowing the relationship between artist and subjects to surface, exposing how trust, tension, and collaboration shaped the work.
The documentary moves between presence and reflection. It does not construct a narrative of achievement, but one of becoming. It shows how these young men inhabit their contradictions, how grace exists alongside rigidity, and how vulnerability emerges inside structure.
The film is not about ballet.
It is about what remains when performance falls away.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Igor Mattio is an Italian-born, New York–based visual artist working between photography, film, and publishing. His practice centers on the human body as a space of emotional truth, contradiction, and transformation.
He is the founder of Artfineline, a publishing and production platform dedicated to artist-driven projects that exist between photography, documentary, and visual narrative.
Mattio’s work is characterized by an intimate, restrained approach that rejects spectacle and sexualization in favor of presence, vulnerability, and psychological depth.
KEY THEMES
Grace as vulnerability
Masculinity beyond performance
The body as emotional language
Intimacy and restraint
Youth, identity, and transformation
Beauty as quiet resistance
PRODUCTION
Developed over multiple journeys in Cuba
Created in close collaboration with the dancers
Produced by Artfineline
Release:
Photobook + Documentary Film
Fall 2026