Performance Installation

A Body in Place: the largest organ
size: 70 in. x 70 in.
2004
materials: black gesso on canvas, skin, fixing adhesive spray



central view, footprints


performance stills

A BODY IN PLACE: Skin, The Largest Organ

The epidermal layer is a site of death and regeneration of which I am hyper aware. It constantly demands attention. A well repeated ritual: rub, scratch, soothe, treat, hide. I see it transform itself endlessly. With skin issues that have come and gone throughout most of my life, and with no definitive results from dermatologists or allergists, I decided to make my own diagnosis with the critical thought and eye that an artist might use.

Standing naked on a canvas for a total of 8 hours, I indulged my skin, tending to all the tiny requests that arose -- stretching, scratching, picking, massaging. Atopic dermatitis and eczema causes my skin to flake, and as skin began to fall and blanket the black canvas around my feet, I remained steadfast. My movements were recorded by the amount of detritus piling up, centralizing an intimate and visceral process that scratching entails. Giving my skin a territory of its own on the canvas was a spatial and temporal map, negotiating the 'placelessness' with which I criticized my body. Degenerative changes were recorded as skin documents, a displaced me was reformulated, and 8 hours of videotape captured the scene.

That thin boundary between us and the world, the skin, is also the most immediate protective layer. However sensitive this biological layer is to us, we are sensitive to it, sometimes caught between social, political, and personal spheres. As a layer that highlights some of our most personal concerns and society's biggest problems, the particular meets the universal.

The most important moment of my 8 hours came in the early morning hours, when my eyes had gone too relaxed and fatigued by the strong overhead light source. Squatting, with a fixed blank stare at white flakes and follicles on a black background transported me to a place far from my current coordinates. Suddenly, I was standing above a galaxy of stars. Each point of light I knew contained the genetic information that linked it inextricably back to one organism. The body became a metaphor for the micro and macro processes of change that I both contribute to and to which I am subject. Our deep connection to each other became apparent, no matter how far our worlds may seem on the surface.

Matthew Puntigam