“Skin is a liminal structure, it is in-between, it is the template on which our experience, inner and outer, is inscribed, and our experience and inheritance, is there to be read by others. It is where the world confronts the I and the I meets the world.” [1]
Oscillating between identity and estrangement, near and far, past and present, wounds and healing, grasping and releasing a matter of a realities and recollections, conservation of this record is vital. Dermas examines the notion of skin as an archive. Consisting of a series of portraits, this work is a collection of documented marks of individual’s histories. Embodied within glass membranes, each remnant is precariously preserved and protected, alluding to its mortality. Identifiable solely by the traces left behind, the owners remain anonymous and detached, their experiences susceptible to the infection of deciphering and decay.
Materials: sellotape, medical tape, found plastics, acrylic gel medium, photographic heat impasto transfer, mounted in glass cabinets 25x7x17cm
Notes:
Michael J. Amy, Hans Gercke, and Heinz Norbert Jocks, Skin (Berlin:Heidleberg, 2006), 22.
sellotape, medical tape, found plastics, acrylic gel medium, photographic heat impasto transfer, mounted in glass cabinets 25x7x17cm
sellotape, medical tape, found plastics, acrylic gel medium, photographic heat impasto transfer, mounted in glass cabinets 25x7x17cm