Yaron Rosner

Oil on Canvas

122x122 cm'

50 years old

Lives in Manchester with his mother

Hair designer

I love my turtle

Her name is Lilibet

Just like King George called Princess Elizabeth.

She eats only salad. Organic salad

One day she didn’t take her head out of her shell

I took her to the vet

“What are you feeding him” he asked

“It’s her, not him” I said

There was a long silence

“Look at the belly” he said.

“A male plastron is slightly concave which allows him to fit over a female’s shell during mating without rolling off.

As he finished speaking Lilibet brought her head out

I took her back home. 

Oil on Canvas 

128X128 cm'

40 years old

Born in Krasnoyarsk, Russia

Lives in Novosibirsk with Galina

Gym teacher at Moskovskiy Institus High school

You can’t see the body that is trapped under my skin

My coach always said

“Anatoly, tuck -in your Musculus rectus abdominis “

He always spoke like a priest.

In America you call it six pack.

I could have won medals in Atlanta or Sydney

Parallel bars, pommel horse, the rings, even the floor

I was the best.

Number one.

Just before the Olympics came Alexei.

Alexei Nemov

And he won them all

Twelve medals

Second place in Russia is like nothing, 

Not like in America, you tell everyone “Good job, good job”

The Iguana?

Her name is Galina, but that’s a long story

Like my grandfather said:

“If god had hands he would strangle himself”

Oil on Canvas 

128X128 cm'

52 years old

Born in Teheran

Lives in Montreal, Canada

Speaks 6 languages

Chain smoker

It was a secret

Yet everyone knew about our great love.

We thought to get married after he’d earn his Ph.D

Astrophysics.

Black Holes to be specific

Gravitational Singularity Theorem, to be even more specific.

Then came the revolution, people went crazy

My family fled and came to this land,

Where oranges never grow.

I was sure he was going to join me

But he changed his loyalty from Galileo to Khomeini

I guess if you look at the stars all day

You’ll eventually find god.

Sometimes I dream of him knocking at my door

Holding a bouquet of roses

Pink roses, to be specific.

Oil on Canvas 

128X128 cm'

26 years old

Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Lives in Chester, Pennsylvania

Works for –Sam & Sam butcher shop

173 Score on LSAT

Accepted to Yale Law School

We kept on saying

 “What Happens in Rumspringa stays in Rumspringa “

But they all returned, took the vow and talked

I just couldn’t go back and pretend

Fighting takes my mind off the pain

I’m good at fighting

When I want to sleep

I let them hit me.

Oil on Canvas 

128X128 cm'

20 years old

Born in La Rochelle, France

Lives in Paris, France 

Acting student at Cours Florent, Paris

My father gave me a cat for my 12th birthday

She was all white with blue eyes

Blue like the sea in the winter

I named her Josephine.

Like the singer Josephine Baker that my mother loved so much

One day I left the window open

When I came back from school she was gone.

Like my father who left a year earlier

That was the day I ran away from home for the first time.

Now that I told you do you see me differently?

Oil on Canvas 

76X76 cm'

42 years old

Born in Munich, Germany

Artistic director at Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance

1993-1997 Stuttgart Ballet

1998-2003 Principal Dancer at the Royal Ballet of London

Martha warned me

She kept saying “Stop jumping so high, it’s for the young “

But I was a natural jumper.

It happened during Act III,

The Sleeping Beauty

One of the longest ménages in all of classical ballet

I went up for the grands jetés

Big jump from one foot to the other in which the working leg is brushed into the air and appears to have been thrown

When I hit the floor I felt the knife curving my leg.

I knew immediately it was over for me

I don’t know how or why but I kept my stage smile

“Ruptured Achilles and patella fracture” said the doctor

Total betrayal of the body

My body

My temple

The end of my career 

Oil on Canvas 

128X128 cm'

15 years old

Boarding school Institut Le Rosey,

Rolle, Switzerland

For the third time this month

I’ve been sent to the headmaster’s office

Monsieur Terieur. Alain Terieur

An outsider

He will sit behind his mahogany desk looking down

After a minute of silence

He will clear his throat

Then he will take out his golden Mont-Blanc pen

Then three sips from his glass of water

Always three

With his frowning face and sober tone he will say

“This school is Une École pour la Vie”

“School for life” my ass

None of the kids here will ever need to work a day in their lives

They will never expel me

They are too afraid

Not every kid rides back home in a convoy of bulletproof Cadillacs 

They don’t even ask what’s wrong

I wouldn’t tell them anyway

I fell in love

Her name is Melindaa

I was invisible to her

Breaking my arm was the best thing that happened to me