Adriana Peliano's 'Desire Machines' Blends Steampunk and Surrealism

Adriana Peliano's series 'Desire Machines' assembles steampunk-inspired images from discarded objects, prosthetics, dolls, busts, and gears to form new visual organisms. The work is analyzed by Wiktor V/R of creAtIva | AI Art Book, who notes that Peliano uses the machine not as retro-futuristic ornament but as a structure of thought. The figures follow a 'cadavre exquis' logic, combining physical, affective, and mechanical fragments into unstable, vulnerable bodies. The series references Hans Bellmer's 'Die Puppe' (1932), as noted by the Museo Reina Sofía, and Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis', highlighted by the British Film Institute, particularly the robot Maria. Unlike Bellmer's surrealist perturbation or Lang's industrial monumentality, Peliano's work operates on an intimate scale, evoking stop-motion animation and miniature theaters. The images hover on the brink of movement, suggesting narrative suspension. Peliano's iconography treats desire as a force that reorganizes remnants, revealing a fragile negotiation between human and machine, and emphasizing wound, memory, and the need to reimagine life within the artificial. The series is featured in creAtIva AI Art Book Vol/9 'ART: it is argument', which includes voice narrative and augmented reality video.