Second Skin
We all have a body; this is obvious. Our lives are structured by our body: When we are hungry - we eat, when we are cold - we cover up, when we are tired - we sleep, and yet how do we actually understand our relationship with our body? Is our body more than these physical indicators? Does our body extend past this physical form? What role does our body play in the understanding of our identity? Do we have only one body or do we create multiple bodies for ourselves? Where does our body end and our environment begin?
The Second Skin series of artworks and installations explores how we, as humans, experience and understand our bodies and how our experiencing of our body and its interactions affect the whole of who we “are”. Second Skin focuses on how we clothe, shape, protect, and define our bodies. It explores what we choose to place upon our body and how, in turn, those choices become not only a part of how we understand our body but also an extension of our body.
These “skins” with which we wrap our bodies become the shifting boundaries between interior and exterior. These “skins” are membranes through which we filter our experiencing of the exterior, sensual world. They can serve as protection from the unknown and at the same time, they define who we are. In this way, they can become impenetrable barriers to our experiencing of the sensual world around us. These “skins” can also be porous, shifting borderlands allowing sensual experiences through, blurring the boundaries between the exterior and the interior worlds and broadening our understanding of what are body is and what it can be.
--Jjenna Hupp Andrews
We all have a body; this is obvious. Our lives are structured by our body: When we are hungry - we eat, when we are cold - we cover up, when we are tired - we sleep, and yet how do we actually understand our relationship with our body? Is our body more than these physical indicators? Does our body extend past this physical form? What role does our body play in the understanding of our identity? Do we have only one body or do we create multiple bodies for ourselves? Where does our body end and our environment begin?
The Second Skin series of artworks and installations explores how we, as humans, experience and understand our bodies and how our experiencing of our body and its interactions affect the whole of who we “are”. Second Skin focuses on how we clothe, shape, protect, and define our bodies. It explores what we choose to place upon our body and how, in turn, those choices become not only a part of how we understand our body but also an extension of our body.
These “skins” with which we wrap our bodies become the shifting boundaries between interior and exterior. These “skins” are membranes through which we filter our experiencing of the exterior, sensual world. They can serve as protection from the unknown and at the same time, they define who we are. In this way, they can become impenetrable barriers to our experiencing of the sensual world around us. These “skins” can also be porous, shifting borderlands allowing sensual experiences through, blurring the boundaries between the exterior and the interior worlds and broadening our understanding of what are body is and what it can be.
--Jjenna Hupp Andrews
