About

"I understand the body as a vehicle. It is the vehicle we know best because we are stuck in it."

(Berlinde De Bruyckere)

"Sheaths on sheaths, skins on skins, manifoldnesses of impressions."

(Michael Serres)

"Real body and incorporeal fictions are inseparable in digital operations."(Anne Cauquelin)

 

We are encased in four skins. Clothing, architecture is layered over our epidermis. Hardly tangible, liquid and yet eerily present, the fourth skin wraps itself around the body. It is reflected in the light, like the surface of many small and large screens. Virtual space surrounds the body of the 21st century like another skin. But what happens when we skin this multi-layered body, what remains and what materiality the different layers follow. In multimedia installations, I explore the texture and effectiveness of digital skins in non-virtual space. What happens when we skin our digital surrogates? Does the digital membrane behave like an epidermis in a shedding process? I pursue these questions in a process of inversion. In my artistic practice, I work with organic materials that reactively change their form, becoming solid, liquid, brittle or soft. Wax, sugar and fat are predominantly materials I use to feel the surface of these skinned objects.

 

„Let the last veil fall and the secret be revealed; it is as complicated as all the barriers that protected it. Even the Harlequin’s skin beliefs the unity presumed in what he says because it, too, is a harlequin’s coat. The audience tries to laugh again, but it can’t anymore: perhaps the man should strip himself – whistles, jeers. Can someone be asked to skin himself?“

(Michael Serres)