What Is Skin

2023

A fixation. It all started after an eye surgery earlier this year that changed my perception of myself. It turned into an obsession of this want to  understand my body both mentally and figuratively. I need to always want to change certain aspects about myself. However, although I know in my mind that nothing is perfect, I still seem to have this need to understand and recreate my body out of perfect clay. Having myself to focus and explore what identity, body dysmorphia,  self judgment, and  insecurities mean to me, I broke it down into 3 categories to understand these feelings and expectations towards myself:  photography, painting, and poems. These three fields allowing myself to explore both the physical and mental as a form of story-telling of the specific aspects that drew me into this fixation, I have arranged self portraits in different presentations to peel away each layer of skin in search of the source, breaking away from the chains and splitting the sheets as a new self.  After completing my journey of eye surgeries, an idea kept coming through my mind, “Eye of Judgment.” For me it was an entity, floating around, always shining a light on me, my body and my actions, a raw and objective gaze  judging me - a manner/type  of  continuation of losing, containing  and controlling, placing myself within a box of undoubt. While utilizing the Eye of Judgment to manifest both a physical domain, such as the surgery on my  physical eye as well as a more metaphorical eye, which is watching me, evaluating me, castigating me, and questioning who I think I am.