Carlos Estévez (Havana, Cuba, 1969) uses marionettes, whose bodies are created out of the forms of musical instruments, to create art that has both a whimsical delight and a silent poignancy. His bodies are not animated with life, but hanging limp on their strings. His figures seem sadly uninspired by the music that their bodies have the potential to make. In this way, Estevez’s work walks a line between suggesting his character’s unrealized potential, balanced with the possibility that at any moment they might begin to play the music within themselves. Estevez underscores the relationship between the human body and musical instruments. In Circunloquio (Circumlocution) the artist draws the visual parallel between the s-curves of the violin and the sinuous line of the hips, waist, and breasts of the female body; a visual relationship most famously depicted by Man Ray’s Ingres’ Violin, Ray’s 1924 photograph inspired by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's La Grande Baigneuse, 1808. Ray transforms the female body into a musical instrument by painting sound-holes on her back, playing with the idea of objectification of the body. But Estevez does not just confine himself to the violin, also employing the clarinet, the harpsicord, and a plethora of other instruments to create an array of different body types an orchestra of humanity.