“I just have so much energy to create. And I would have kept going if I hadn’t run out of space,’ he said. Elsewhere in his house there were cloudy resin cast paintings; blown-up photos he’d taken with a disposable camera when he was 15; and a few awards for two short films he directed on the subject of mental health.
For Mr. Anastasis, having the space and time to make art, or as he described it, “the freedom to play” is an extravagance that he has always wanted and earned. “I’m lucky to have a job,” he said. “I’m not doing all this to pay the bills.” While there are similarities between his salon and sculpting practices—namely, the trust he demands from his clients and models—there is a difference between cutting someone’s hair and making a replica of their breasts, as he did for his mother’s mother. friend. “She had seen my work on Instagram,” he said. “I’m not going to lie, I was nervous. But I also loved how open she was.”
He pulled out a recording of “im·mort·tal,” a performance he performed at New York’s Laverdin Fine Arts last fall. The footage showed Jefferson “The Tank” Sullivan, an MMA and Muay Thai fighter, stretched out naked on a massage table in the middle of a white-box gallery. Mr. Anastasis carefully applied strips of plaster-soaked cotton to Mr. Sullivan’s back, which was glowing with petroleum jelly. About 20 minutes after applying them, he removed what had become a hardened shell. “It’s like an exorcism,” said Mr. Anastasis. “Something is being taken out.” Sullivan described the experience as “magical,” while another of his models, fitness coach Matt Pattison, said, “It’s a therapeutic experience. Each time I saw him holding the piece like a child.”
mr. Anastasis was raised by Cypriot immigrants in the town of Beckenham, Kent. His father, a shoemaker, made shoe samples for Jimmy Choo. His mother owned the Fiji Unisex Hair Salon, where elderly women from the neighborhood went for their weekly shampoo-and-set treatments. He loved her from an early age: at night, when everyone had gone to bed, he discovered the Barbie dolls he had hidden from his two older sisters and gave them braids.
So it came as a surprise when he enrolled in the fashion design technology program at the London College of Fashion. “Do you know what’s wrong?” said Mr Anastasis. “I went into fashion because my father said only gay men do her.” Laughing, he added, “Well, that didn’t work.”