.svg)
Menu
Menu
Avatars don't have body limits or the physical constraints we face daily. If they could be anything, why do these virtual creatures still look a lot like us? Imagining virtual bodies can be liberating for humans; an exercise of freedom. Artist, curator, and educator Martina Menegon is so into this idea, she sometimes forgets to take care of her physical self!
If a virtual body can be anything - any shape, any gender, any physics - why do most avatars still look like people? That's the question at the heart of Martina Menegon's practice. The artist, curator, and educator has spent years thinking about what virtual embodiment actually liberates us from, and whether most digital spaces are using that freedom at all.
Martina Menegon is an artist, curator, and educator whose work centres on avatars, virtual bodies, and the relationship between digital representation and physical experience. She is known for pushing the question of embodiment beyond aesthetics - asking what it means for human identity when the body is a programmable object. Her practice spans immersive digital installations, performance, and education, and she brings to it a combination of technical fluency and genuine philosophical curiosity about what it means to inhabit a virtual self.
The avatar question is not trivial. How we represent ourselves in digital spaces - and what we imagine is possible in those representations - reflects our assumptions about identity, freedom, and what the body means. Menegon's work reveals that most avatar design reproduces the same constraints as the physical world, importing biological limits into spaces where those limits don't exist. This conversation explores what it would look like to use virtual embodiment as a genuine practice of liberation - and why the gap between what's possible and what's being built is so large.
Avatars as self-portrait and speculation
An avatar is not just a representation - it's a proposal about who you might be. Menegon treats avatar design as a creative practice with its own aesthetic and political stakes, separate from the game or platform it exists within.
The freedom gap in virtual worlds
Virtual environments technically permit radical bodily freedom. Most don't use it. Menegon's observation that avatars tend to look human - even in contexts where they don't have to - reveals how deeply embodied assumptions travel into digital space.
Collecting embodied experience
For collectors engaging with immersive digital work, Menegon's practice raises questions about what exactly is being acquired. Is it an object? An experience? A possibility space? Her work tests those categories in productive ways.
Education as extension of practice
As an educator, Menegon extends her inquiry through teaching - helping students develop their own relationships to virtual embodiment rather than adopting existing conventions. This pedagogical dimension shapes her practice as much as exhibition.
Digital art that deals seriously with embodiment and identity is doing some of the most interesting conceptual work available today. Menegon's practice connects to long traditions in feminist and body-based art while opening genuinely new territory. If you're thinking about what digital collecting means beyond the object, this is the conversation to start with.
Unlocked is the podcast by 100 collectors - the global network for digital art collectors. Each episode, we speak with artists, curators, collectors, and builders shaping the digital art world. No market speculation. No hype. Just honest, substantive conversations about art, practice, and what it means to collect today. New episodes release throughout the year. Find Unlocked on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 100 collectors is a membership network. [Explore membership →]
