Memory Skin

2016

Cotton fibers, gelatin, acrylic

The needlework on this shell of “skin” represents various personal memories and experiences, simplified into symbols and abstracted by the material and process. This piece originated as a questioning of where experience lives in the body and the role it plays in our identities. Although the language changes (epigenetics, scars, memories) it is a common theme in life that our bodies and our selves change as we go through the world, retaining some trace of what has happened, where we’ve been, and with whom we’ve connected.  These ephemeralities make up identities that feel much more static than their components. This body is an exploration of what it might look like if the fabric of life that is woven into our beings was aesthetic. It is a fantastical representation of our experiences physically recorded and presented for the outside world the way we visualize them for ourselves. As the piece evolved it also began to address, if our stories are in fact somewhere in our bodies, what it means to leave stages of our lives behind as we grow and change.