skin prints

skin prints is a participatory collaborative project that offers a unique cataloging experience of touch over distance.

skin prints is a participatory collaborative project that offers a unique cataloging experience of touch over distance. Collaborators sign up on a google form, receive all free materials to create a unique print shipped to them, a stamped envelope to send materials back, and digital or physical copies emailed to them.

I started skin prints in 2014 as an attempt to offer a collaborative therapeutic release to my own and collaborator’s bodily trauma through the creation of print archives. As I re-engage with this project, its meanings have shifted due to the context of critical issues that affect us all; pandemic isolation, the need for universal healthcare, police brutality, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Now more than ever bodies are without touch, and Black and Brown people are disproportionately endangered by police brutality and systemic racism.

The anonymity of the bodies portrayed up close in imprints creates a unique archive of time and skin without the immediate context of identity. Each image is presented black and white to create an anonymous, embodied union of skin each with their own diverse background and physical presence. Enlarging each imprint to highlight textures, shapes, and repetitive patterns of hair, folds of skin, and scars compiles a collective record of the human body as vastly differentiated and intimately similar.

I am interested in taking the framework of Anthropocentric resilience to consider the taxonomy of the body as a way to promote shared understanding, perspective, and participation through my collaborative open-call-for-participation project. skin prints offer an archival print of one’s body in direct relationship to the moment of its creation through the use of sticky material that documents the skin's surface. Through the production of a skin print the history of one’s skin, its scarring and deterioration is flattened and preserved as a monochromatic topography showcasing irrevocable bodily entropy. This work sheds light on the cyclical nature of life, a different way of grasping mortality, and a new ways of perceiving the unifying factors of humanity.

Collaborators receive their 4” x 5” piece of transparent sticker paper and directions on how to apply this tactile paper to create an image. I reference large format film, as these prints are scanned in high-resolution for enlargement. Collaborators are given directions, which state to choose a place on their body that has significance to them in any way. Collaborators are also offered the opportunity to share a story, poem, or other literature, or a sound file in relationship to the place they chose on their body, including an option to disclose where on their body they chose. I aim to utilize these shared stories to create a book that goes alongside this work, as well as creating a re-contextualized sound piece that bridges my collaborators voices and sound into a sonic landscape.

Through this widespread print collaboration I aim to create an archive of bodies, intentional positive touch, and evidence of bodily persistence.