A body that one must make one's own: becoming readable to oneself, marking with ink signs that make sense. Out of the impenetrability of her first stories, she has created limpidity. Here she is, at her threshold.

- Too similar for two beings completely different. Is there a cure ? To put a head on the wrong body. Mutilation, mutation ?
- Loving and working on one's body in order to accentuate our differences and our individuality. Not expecting anything in return except possible respect.

I am Lukas Zpira, 01, out of a new artistic experimentation based on mutation. My new body is a work of art dedicated to life and his message is the power of evolution and the possibility of questioning. So don’t be surprised if I’m no longer the man you see in front of your eyes.

I was a small girl when I discovered the special smell of hospitals. Doctors cut a piece of my leg and sew everything up with a black thread. I weared bandages and was on crutches for a long time. I tried to hide that ugly scar which I didn't like. Now, I choose by myself the marks I want to put on my body. I smile when I see the nice lignes which are scarified on my leg all around the scar who made me growing up.

Tattoo art give me the possibility to be the architect of my own body's rebirth. The pleasure of the spiritual control of pain, the buzing of the needles, the smell of the desinfectant, the friendship with the tatoo artist, the irreversible act of tatooing give me intense sensations.

My modifications are a fight against the mediocrity of our lives, options added to the machine. I’m in search of my own identity by means of work on my body. The pain I’m inflicting on myself reminds me of previous stages.

To distinguish myself from others, to be permanently tattooed, irremediably. I keep my old tattoos without ever covering them up. They are the marks of a period of life, a sort of memory of the events of my life. I like meeting people and sharing my tattooes with them, while waiting for a positive response from them.

My modifications are stigmata: vectors for the senses, traces of a painful past which, obviously, I meant to be visible. The first one was a self-scarification, which I did intuitively and spontaneously eight years ago. This initiation ritual: I often repeat. Unlike a mutilation or commonplace destruction, it symbolizes my rebirth.

After I had my implants, I felt different. Now my friends call me 'double teflon'.

My education overwhelmed me with sexual taboos and the fear of my own body. Later I had to exorcize that fear by doing body modifications. I learnt recently that my sufferings went back before I was born. If I have tatooes it is maybe because my grandmother was a gas victim of hitler. Sufferings are repeating themselves from generation to generation. Me, I symbolically inflict them to myself.

My modifications are born from impulsive desires and curiosity. They grew in numbers when I developed my own personality.

Which is the good word ?

Destruction or rebirth
Violence or evolution
Rejection or recognition
Suffering or Pleasure
Belonging or Freedom

Soon my body will show curves and designed stories. Little cuts similar to delightful bites with finishing touches violent and soft. My spirit is elated at the thought of observing this once-virgin body heal: this turns into an effervescence of my body sensitivity, as intense as euphoria during erotic games.

I had my first piercing when I was 12 years old, surely by a desire of provocation. I don't like to be unnoticed. Sometimes I attract aggressiveness.

I sometimes forget my tattooes and I love what the artist designed on my body.

A body which must be mine: to become readable to myself, to ink the marks who have meanings. The body a palimpsest of encounters.

'On your marks!' Marking my body, better comprehending my soul: This is my path. Path towards pain? In my teens, I hurt myself. Pain of innocence, anorexia, bulimia. Nothing lethal. I learned food deprivation, stomach ache that does not go away. Rough. Then I became a distance runner. Turning stomach ache into leg pain. Putting to use those gulped-down carbohydrates. Master dignified pain. Clench one’s teeth and charge ahead, always faster. To me, tattoos are a given, a necessary step on the road to 'Know Thyself'. I selected my tattoo artist. His steady hand is, to me, all but pain and beauty. Pain inflicted, which must be channeled, embraced. I become masochist the space of a tattoo session. Nowadays when I show my tattoos, I exhibit my pain… My contentment.

Little by little, I enlarged my two nipple piercings. It is a stage in my life. I will never remove them, I will be lost otherwise.