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Skin. And Grace I - Gazing Soft
A photographic and documentary project by Igor Mattio
Skin and Grace began with a question: what does a man’s body hold when it stops performing?
Across Cuba, Igor Mattio worked with four professional ballet dancers, photographing the still moments between rehearsals and after exertion, when years of discipline remain visible in the body.
In these quiet intervals, the body becomes a record of repetition, sacrifice, resistance, vulnerability, and desire.
The project developed through days spent traveling, rehearsing, eating, and living alongside the dancers. The photographs explore the lives shaped by ballet and the physical traces it leaves behind. Constructed images grew from relationships developed over time, allowing gesture, character, and presence to emerge naturally.
The accompanying documentary brings the dancers’ voices into the project. They speak candidly about their beginnings, ambitions, sexual orientation, experiences of coming out, and the challenges of pursuing ballet within a culture where traditional ideas of masculinity remain deeply rooted. Their stories show how strength and vulnerability can inhabit the same body.
The journey also reshaped the project. Initially conceived around five dancers and five athletes, circumstances in Cuba gradually led the work toward a more intimate focus on the dancers. The interruptions, encounters, and unexpected possibilities of the journey became part of its evolution. From this experience emerged Skin and Grace I, while encounters with younger students at the Escuela Nacional de Ballet opened the way to a second chapter, currently in development.
Skin and Grace I is a 96-page hardcover photobook, combining black-and-white and color photographs. A 60-minute documentary film accompanies the project and is scheduled for release in Fall 2026. The first edition is limited to 600 copies.
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Excerpt from the Book
“I came to Cuba drawn by movement, yet I found myself waiting for stillness. The instant when rehearsal ends, when choreography falls away, and only the body remains. There, discipline becomes visible—not as spectacle, but as memory written beneath the skin.
The dancers speak of ambition, family, desire, and the cost of becoming who they are. Their stories reveal that masculinity is neither fixed nor singular. It is negotiated, questioned, resisted, and continually remade.
The project itself followed the same path. What began as ten men across different worlds became four dancers and, unexpectedly, the first traces of another story. Cuba changed the work as much as the work sought to understand Cuba. Sometimes the project we finish is not the one we imagined, but the one reality patiently reveals.”
About the Author
Igor Mattio is a renowned visual artist who blends photography and drawing to create bold and surreal works. His focus on silver gelatin prints in numbered editions has earned him acclaim in the art world. “Skin. And Under” is his latest project, reflecting his deep desire to capture the authentic and vulnerable states of being.
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