(2020) As part of the online residency Objet Trouvé+, I am prompted to create a shadow box. I personify skin and give the avatar a living space. A piece of cardboard shaped like a giant skin cell with eyes creates a character; my daughter hears King when I say Skin. The character is given a crown and the Skin King is born. The shadow box becomes his lavish living room, and incidentally a playground for my daughter.
The Skin King is given props. He sits on a red throne and sips tea from his teapot all day, with no intention to go anywhere. The grater on the table is its sceptre. On the wall, a clock speeds up time. The King renews his own cells in 4 days instead of 35. The cells fall on the carpet which, consequently, need to be wiped daily with a brush and pan.
As a character, the Skin King opens up narratives and allows me to imagine stories in zines following an intuitive, stream-of-consciousness process with no pre-conceived plan or pencil. The A4 page acts as a frame; I draw on the flat open A4, beginning with page 1 and ending with page 8.
The seven objects around the Skin King are narrative props and metaphors – the grater, the table, the throne, the teapot, the clock, the brush, the pan. They tell about the physical and mental experience of living with skin affected by psoriasis. I turn them into archetypes.
My final submission for the online exhibition Unfounded Realities are the seven objects which I make in clay and that represent seven aspects of my psoriasis skin. It is the first time I address psoriasis in my work and with hindsight it remains abstract and detached of emotions because of the sense of shame that I feel at this stage when talking about skin.
You can read more about this project here.
THE SKIN PROJECT 