GO YOUR OWN WAY Because
GO YOUR OWN WAY Because every great journey takes a detour Sophie de Oliveira Barata The artistic founder of The Alternative Limb Project is putting her best foot forward Story Tim Hulse For most of us the idea of a world champion, pole-dancing amputee may be hard to grasp. But for Sophie de Oliveira Barata, designer of wildly imaginative prosthetics, this is the stuff of which artistic possibilities are made. “I’ve made this leg that’s an hourglass shape, slim in the middle, and then it goes into a sort of hoof that allows him to connect to the pole. At the back there are interchangeable chrome sculptures that spin around as he moves,” she says of the limb she’s making for Andrew Gregory, who has made a successful career as a pole dancer after losing his leg in a motorcycle accident. De Oliveira Barata’s other recent projects include a leg with a train running up and down inside, which was commissioned by Darlington Railway Museum for an exhibition, and a leg carved from wood that incorporates a cuckoo clock, for a performer with the Candoco Dance Company. “There’s a little bird that pops out,” she says. “And also a pendulum on a spindle so she can move her leg in any direction and the pendulum will keep going.” Her interest in prosthetics was born from a spell working in a hospital while she was doing an art foundation course. She went on to work at one of the UK’s leading prosthetic providers, making realistic artificial limbs. Her growing sense that there was room for something beyond the conventional was strengthened by encounters with a young girl who came each year to have a new leg made. “She wanted something different every time, like cartoon characters at the top of her leg,” she says. Then she saw an Alexander McQueen catwalk show at which double amputee athlete Aimee Mullins wore ornately carved wooden prosthetics, and her course was set. A couple of years later she launched the Alternative Limb Project and, ever since, has created radical new prosthetics that challenge the way we look at disability and push the envelope of body modification. “I enjoy creating limbs that challenge people’s perceptions of what the body could be,” she says. “I want to push boundaries and unlock the imagination.” J Dab hand: Sophie de Oliveira Barata (above) at her workshop in southern England. Her unique, bespoke creations include Spike Leg (left) worn by musician Viktoria Modesta; Vine (below left), a ‘botanical tentacle’ for model Kelly Knox, and Phantom Limb (below right), a bionic arm for gamer James Young IMAGES: PORTRAIT BY OPHELIA WYNNE; PROJECTS BY OMKAAR KOTEDIA & LUKASZ SUCHORAB 42 / Jaguar Magazine Jaguar Magazine / 43
