skin prints is a participatory collaborative project that offers a unique experience of bodily touch over distance.
BACKGROUND
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 in 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 repetition patterns of hair, folds of skin, and scars compiles a collective record of the human body as vastly differentiated and intimately similar.
Through this widespread collaboration I aim to create an archive of bodies, intentional positive touch, and evidence of bodily persistence. I intend to publish this work in a digital gallery, and strive to exhibit large-scale prints with shared stories.