Nicola Ruffini is a photographer and filmmaker working between Barcelona and New York. The work is made to provoke. By placing people in situations one would never want to be in, fiction becomes a tool to evoke intense emotion, and to let curiosity win over comfort. The pull is toward the discomfort that comes from honesty: the kind that forces a confrontation with what we'd rather not see. The practice challenges what society expects of people. How it positions them, how gender roles and social pressure mold behavior, and what happens when those scripts break. Toxic masculinity, gender, and sexuality run through the work. Much of it centers on performance: the versions of themselves men believe they should be, and the tension between who they are and who they try to appear as, the stories they tell about strength, beauty, and control.