Article :Prothèses en tension : sémiotique du corps altéré chez Sophie de Oliveira Barata et Viktoria Modesta (Sémiolitté-2025)

This article explores the prosthesis not as a mere medical or functional device, but as an aesthetic, political, and semiotic sign of the altered body. Through the practices of Sophie de Oliveira Barata and Viktoria Modesta, it analyzes how the prosthesis becomes a vector of subjectivation, a tool for identity affirmation, and a disruption of ableist norms. Rather than concealing absence, their prostheses embrace and display artificiality, transforming the amputated body into a signifying surface. Drawing on posthumanism, disability studies, and visual semiotics, the article demonstrates that the prosthesis can be understood as an expressive interface, capable of reshaping visibility, desirability, and modes of interaction. It thus becomes a critical device, at the intersection of care, art, and performance, which redefines the boundaries between nature and artifice, body and machine, norm and otherness.

For informations about the human body in littérature and art (Sémiolitté Journal) : https://semiolitte.com/numeros/numero-1-2025/