Cutting up bodies and re-assembling them: fun work in the classroom

July 27, 2023

In her painting of a young girl in a red dress, artist Virginia Santos Itoiz, from Pamplona, wanted to show not a specific child, but a figure that represents childhood.

So she mixed elements from different pictures of children that she found on the Internet to create what she calls a "Frankenstein" character.

Pupils at the ikastola of Larceveau drew inspiration from her painting to make their own cut-up and re-assembled figures.

First, they drew a person standing erect on sheets of paper glued lengthwise. Then they separated the sheets, keeping only the head that they had drawn for themselves and sharing out the rest of the body parts randomly. Finally, they reassembled and coloured in the sheets of paper to create new composite portraits.

At first, they found the exercise somewhat disconcerting, recalls their teacher, Mirentxu Lako.They worried about what they would get back, in place of their own drawings, and how they would put the body parts back together.

But they soon got into the swing of things. "It was crazy for them, but it was fun," says Mirentxu. "We had a great time."