‘Skin’

‘Skin’ floats like a hive. A red and black collection of cocoons suspended from the ceiling of the National Art Gallery of Namibia in a series of stripes, whirls, lines and animal prints. The unsettling installation is the work of Brazilian artist and curator Genivaldo Amorim.

It hovers above the ground, surrounded by ‘3rd Degree Burns’, the artist’s photographic offering that depicts a setting ravaged by fire. Though it’s not obvious without prior explanation, here we see a thing warped by combustion. Paint whose rebirth in fire spawns strange blooms. Rust red flowers, great lakes and mud seeping through snow.

Through the act of burning and under Amorim’s lens, everything suggests something else. A fine mimicry that seems to speak of the recursion of divine design.

Incredibly, no two patches burn the same and, though we are never shown the shared source material, each square is entirely unique and seems to imply that in art, as in life, there are a thousand ways of burning.

All this orbits ‘Skin’. An exhibition devoted to our human casing stretched over skeleton which often speaks before we do. The clothed boundary that sells stories of ourselves to others before we’ve uttered a word while cunningly concealing our guts, our heart and our soul.

Observing Amorim’s soft bodied creatures, at once reminiscent of cocoons, wild animals, body bags and even the softness of a children’s toys, ‘Skin’s’ inert and soft subjects suspended by a wire seem poised to say much but stay mum. Standing in curious contrast with the framed burnings that seem to connote flame on flesh and the stripping away of façade to the simplicity of soul.

This, however, is mere conjecture. For, in reality, the bodies say nothing. Instead they gather like something about to be born.

And indeed they soon will be as their skin will return to Brazil to be distributed among fashion designers who will transform them into clothing that will turn into a new exhibition.

Skin worn over skin as the barrier grows thicker and meaning is sewn tight into garments worlds away from the people who first encountered them as butterflies veiled by cocoons.

Certainly strange and inspiring of rumination, ‘Skin’s’ success lies in its ability to give viewers pause.

To have them peer into burnt frames to find symbols and scenes and to stand in the middle of the room surrounded by red and black bodies that are not entirely human, elephant or anything but simply skin. And whatever else one makes of the hovering, the juxtaposition and the bodies.

Still, silent and framed by fire.

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