Alex Barendregt: “Beauty comes first”

The article was first published in Makeup&YOU Professional magazine.

How many years has the Body Art Festival, of which you became the founder, existed? How did you come up with this idea? The World Body Art Festival has existed for 18 years. My passion for this art form began in my youth. I worked at a travel agency in a small town in southern Austria. And when I was given the task of organizing an event that would attract more tourists, I came across one very interesting picture that changed my whole life. Only eight artists came to the first festival; they painted outdoors in the park and delighted the eyes of visitors. How often does the festival take place and what is its geography? The festival takes place once a year, still in the south of Austria, in the small town of Pörtschach on the shores of the crystal clear Lake Wörthersee.

The work of Alex Hansen (Brazil), which made him the World Champion in Body Art in the Airbrush category, 2014

Are there many hotels there? Is the infrastructure well developed? This is a tourist town; in the summer there are a lot of tourists who come on vacation. Accordingly, the infrastructure is well developed. We chose this place because nature combines perfectly with the art of body art. A large number of artists, photographers and models gladly come from large cities to relax surrounded by nature. You said that at the first festival there were only 8 masters, but how many are participating now? How global has the event become? Until 2003, the festival was called the “European Body Art Festival,” but the media promoted our event so much that the competition acquired the title of the World Body Art Championship, since artists from all over the world began to come to us. Today we have 250 competing teams from 47 nationalities.

Work by Agnishka Glinska (Poland), World Prize “Body Art in Ultraviolet”, 2014

Do you allow everyone to participate or only masters who have reached a certain level of creativity? Of course, there is a preliminary selection, where the jury evaluates photographs of the participants’ previous works. Professionals compete in the World Awards category, we have five of them, and for beginners we created the Amateur Award category, we have a total of 10 categories, including 2 makeup categories. And you yourself, besides organizational issues, what other functions do you perform? You probably also conduct some master classes on body art and exhibit your models? I am not an artist, I am an organizer of events and training programs based on body art. To some extent, this is also an art, which is why I am invited to beauty schools around the world to tell students about this modern art form and its future, because the era of body art is just beginning. The festival hosts the largest training program, WB Academy, which over 5 days presents more than 65 lessons in different areas (special effects, props, makeup, airbrushing and much more). Our teachers are professionals in their field, many of them are world famous. Over the long period of the festival, you have certainly developed favorites among the artists. Which of them can you highlight and why? How did they hook you? All the big names in the field of body art were at one time participants in my festival, they grew professionally at it and became famous thanks to their participation in the event. Everyone has their own unique style and it’s difficult for me to pick one single favorite among them, besides, we all became very close friends. In addition to festival activities, there is also our agency, whose work is to develop and promote body art artists - we find work for them. First photo: work by Olga Sokolova (Russia). World Award: “Special Effects in Body Art”, 2013