“Skin is a liminal structure, it is in-between, it is the template on which our experiences, 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 confronts the world.”1
Mundi suggests that skin is a performative surface, by which our identity is both formed and defined serving as a symbolic interface, for materialization and meaning. Meaning can be ascribed to skin, this marked surface has the ability to act as an autobiographical record. ‘Skin remembers, both literally in its material surface and metaphorically in re-signifying on this surface.’2 Prosser proposes that through memory, we become aware of the skin as a visible surface. Holding a remembered past on the surface of skin, the present is immediately transferred through sight and touch of the skin’s surface both to others and to ourselves. In a sense skin is both a site and sight of memory for our personal histories.
Engaging with individuals close to me and the marks on their skin, I make work through a collaborative process that examines ideas of representation, trauma, and authenticity. Utilizing analogue photography and video installations, I aim to foster a singular experience through materiality by dis-identifying with other reproducible digital forms. Focusing on the epidermal likeness yet retaining the anonymity of the subject, I use ‘skin portraiture’ as a method to disrupt traditional portraiture, while protecting the individual involved. Through the magnification, fragmentation and anatomization of the epidermis, this abstraction of the body through skin allows anonymity for the individual, only identifiable by the differentiating marks present.
The intention is to reveal these often-unseen marks that bare testament to an individual’s experience. The act of uncovering these hidden tethers is an attempt to address the uneasiness connected to their concealment and exposure, in order to understand the complexities of embodiment and inhabiting one’s skin.
Abigayle McLean
List of Works:
Tira
Polaroids, a letter, Kawakawa oil diffused, encased inside eight Kauri display cases 30x22x6 cm
Josh
One channel video projection and audio through headphones
1. Veronica Mundi in, Heide Hatry: Skin, ed. Heide Hatry (Berlin:Heidleberg, 2006), 22
2. Jay Prosser, ‘Skin Memories’, in Thinking Through The Skin, ed. Sarah Ahmed and Jackie Stacey (New York: Routledge, 2004.