But Beautiful has obtained the Prix de la Critique 2013, Voies Off Festival, Arles. In 1988, in an attempt to overcome personal problems, Cristina Nuñez began to take self-portraits in private. Giving shape to her emotions and revealing her presence to the world, enabling her to turn an uncompromising gaze upon herself, but also to project herself as she wanted to be, these images became a form of self-therapy through which she learned who she is. But Beautiful is her endeavour to transform “shit into diamonds”, to make sense of her past as a drug addict and a prostitute, to search the roots of her behaviour and her actions, finding a link with her ancestors –some of which were part of Franco’s dictatorship-, and thus to soothe her ever-present inner pain. In the last decade, Nuñez has used her personal experience to create her unique self-portrait method, which she teaches around the world. These two paths, through which Nuñez states that, “The existing separation between art and therapy is intolerable,” now form the focus of her art.
