Into My Skin, 2023 series
Media: Pickle juice, bread and butter pickle brine, pickle imprints, watercolor pigment, alcohol ink, gold patina ink, pink salt, glue, hairspray, artist's hair as a brush on paper.
Dimensions: L36in. x W24in.
(1) Invisibility, (2) Flesh, (3)Transparency,
The three-work multi-media series explores how the body can both conceal and expose the history of trauma associated with emotional abuse, mental illness, and complex-PTSD. Into My Skin investigates the ideas of invisibility, as in hiding, versus transparency, as in openness, and imagines how emotional trauma could appear on the skin of the physical body.
I tap into my history of coping with emotional abuse throughout adolescence. Connecting my invisible trauma to the body, I imagine the internal wounds as inflammation on my skin by drawing from my chronic experiences with severe eczema. I transform an obsessive compulsive coping mechanism from childhood, repeating "safe" phrases to drown out fears and anxieties in moments of distress, into entire pages of handwritten memories with illustrated former ticks, messages to my past self, and present streams of consciousness. The layers of handwriting appear on the first and the third pieces in the series, Invisibility and Transparency, while the second, or central piece, Flesh, resembles damaged flesh with flaky, inflamed tissue.
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