Sarah Cunningham wrote a review on LANDSCAPES which appears in my catalogue

Landscapes of flesh
By Sarah Cunningham

The female body has become regulated, objectified and ultimately subservient to an illusion.

Agata Cardoso's images are a direct response to how the female form has been disfigured by the media's construction of the aesthetically 'correct' body. We may say that the actuality of the female body has not only been misrepresented by the media but become utterly reshaped into airbrushed impossibilities; a spectacle of digitalised perfection, unattainable to most women. The media representation of the female form is then simply a figment, a product of the imagination, grounded solely in the realm of fantasy and illusion. Idealised images that are not simply the beautification of the female body, but a reinvention that goes so far as to alienate the female form from its actuality.
Perhaps the reason why we find these images so unsettling is that we have all become accustomed to the soft, scarless bodies of the aesthetically 'correct' body. We have been drawn into the illusion, perpetuating its existence and thus in a very real sense, we have become delusional, divorced from the truth of what the female form actually looks like. Its true identity is lost to us. Cardoso's work is at once the revealing of the female form and the illumination of the falsity of the media's depiction of it. It is a transgression from the illusion of what is 'normal' and a violent break away from the disfigurement of its intangible beautification.
The extreme close ups of loose flesh and skin makes for uncomfortable viewing because it forces the viewer to acknowledge how the female body has been transformed into the literal site of conflict. If we find ourselves shocked by these images it is because we have been forced, through the violence of Cardoso's work, to re-examine our conception of the female body and by extension, re-examine the very foundation of who we are.
Photos of scarred bodies are typically met with ideas of narcissism and destruction but Cardoso's work is flesh exposed, elucidated under the eye of the lens. These damaged bodies reveal to us not an image of trauma or beauty, but instead the liberation from such terms. These images are celebrations of the reunion of the female body with the actuality of its true physical existence. Faced with the brutality of 'the real' all illusion subsides; the feminine body is revealed in violent lucidity. These images are not manifestations of self-indulgence; these bodies do not wish to be viewed as vessels of pity. These bodies are symbols of empowerment, encouraging women to fully experience and come to terms with the brutal existence of the female body and enable women to finally be in a position to realistically shatter their deep seated insecurities about their own body image. The extreme close ups disorientate the viewer, transforming these bodies into sensuous landscapes of flesh, encouraging the viewer to take in all the intricate beauty of the more voluptuous female form, the supposed imperfections transforming them into sites of intrigue not disgust.

Cardoso's abrasive images transform the un-airbrushed body into a map that the viewer must struggle to decipher, highlighting the struggle one must endure to fully reconcile the body and the 'real'.