In recent months, Marina Marković invited me to contribute a text – together with Ješa Denegri, Matthieu Lelievre, Lucrezia Nardi and Orlan – for her solo exhibition at the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, on view until 25th August. The artist selected phrases from each text, which she then tattooed onto her body on the day of the Opening. Here I share an extract of my reflections, which will be published in full in the exhibition catalogue.
I have never found myself writing an exhibition text that does not align with the essayistic style I normally employ in my curatorial work. This text is the fruit of a series of personal reflections that have matured over the last months leading up to Marina Marković’s exhibition – The Arrangement(s). This process was precisely sparked by the artist, who prompted me to imagine writing a text on her body: a concept, a sentence, words, or even punctuation marks that would be tattooed on her skin during her solo exhibition at the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. What unsettled me was the extraordinary freedom the artist granted me. No limits were imposed on me, except for those inherently dictated by the body itself.
In the past, I have never inscribed someone’s body with coded language or grammar. I came close to it in my youth, in a somewhat unconscious way, leaving marks on others’ bodies as a result of accidental and highly intense interactions while playing sports like rugby and basketball. Later, as I matured, this occurred during romantic encounters, where the pursuit of pleasure inadvertently caused bruises, small haematomas, irritations, scratches, and bites on another’s body. Yet, I always felt a sense of shame in leaving even the most fleeting mark on someone’s body. Even with partners who literally asked me to bite them, I restrained myself, because I have always been cautious about anything resembling the desecration of skin, body, and person. For similar reasons, I never wanted to have any sentence or image tattooed on myself: I let only the passage of time and the marks it leaves be inscribed on it. I have never tolerated the idea of something that remains forever, and although aesthetic surgery now offers the possibility of removal, I imagine a tattoo as an indelible mark on the skin.
Of all our senses, sight and touch represent contrasting modes of interaction with the world. The eyes are organs that operate at a distance, while the skin operates up close. Our eyes see only a part of reality or, more precisely, a projection of something that is elsewhere and distant from the eyeball. Sight is a sense that receives information directly from the place where a phenomenon occurs: in this way, the eye informs me and provides context, thus helping me break the isolation of the part of space in which I live. The skin, in contrast, feels directly upon itself through touch, pressure, or friction, something that acts directly on our body. It confirms that, as Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “I exist my body.”
I cannot escape this obsession with skin that Marina has incited. I continue to look at the skin on my hands and arms as I type on the computer, never quite grasping the essence of differences in complexion, pigment, sheen, or texture of the skin as I move my forearm, wrist, or fingers. The skin envelops me and insinuates itself into the most diverse parts, spreading and folding according to the movements that part of the body most often makes. Namely, although I perceive myself as something permanent, my boundary with the world undergoes continual micro-changes, incessant negotiations imposed by my physiology, psychological state, and the activities I engage in. I continue to look at my palms, observing the traces of folds, the imperfect distribution of lines, and reflecting on my mobile boundaries. Boundaries that are always and only between me and the world, and which you and others usually see only on my head, hands, arms and, more rarely, feet and legs.
The skin holds in my body; it is the external, mobile boundary that confirms the division between myself and the world: it feels touches, caresses, scratches, breath, friction, kisses, bites, sucking, itching, pressure, massages, tickles. As Jean-Luc Nancy stated, “the body delights in being touched. It delights in being squeezed, weighed, thought by other bodies, and being the one that squeezes, weighs, and thinks other bodies. Bodies delight in and are delighted by bodies.” The body, wrapped in skin, delights in sharing its surface and, furthermore, enjoys being the boundary that continuously endures the erasure of boundaries. Thus, if I extend my arm in greeting and we shake hands, our fingers cross boundaries. If we embrace, we cross boundaries. The skin adapts; it is elastic and adjusts to our changing positions by wrapping itself differently. The skin, which protects and separates me from the world, thus allows me to receive directly on my body the imprint left by what is outside us, the foreign mass that physically acts upon me.
Whose skin, then, is it that shapes these hands at this moment as I look at them while writing? Is it the final edge of my body or the first veil of the world? After all, the skin is something personal, mine – so why do I carry it around on my body? Or is it someone else’s, belonging to those who can see it, though not always and everywhere? These two possibilities may not be in opposition, given that the skin, by its very particular nature, defies the concept of contradiction. It is both mine and not mine at the same time, as it is merely a thin foil that separates the inside and outside surfaces, but it does not question who the owners are. My skin is thus also yours, and similarly, your skin is mine if we come into contact. But what happens if, instead of touching, the skin is seen only from a distance? Whose is it?
This is what I ponder as I imagine Marina’s skin, which will be tattooed before my eyes and the eyes of so many spectators who will assist in the performance. Whose skin is the artist’s? It is undoubtedly hers, even in her desire to display it and make it an expressive medium, a manifesto, perhaps even a battleground, by using it for inscribing something. But it is also yours and mine, since we are entrusted with the role of spectators, those who can see the skin swell and turn red under the tattoo artist’s ink-filled needles. Although in most cases, a body artist’s body is solely in their possession, during a performance, it ceases to be just theirs. I imagine Marina’s skin as an alien entity, like an embassy of her body in another country, beyond its original boundaries. When presented in the context of a performance, Marina’s skin becomes public and represents her beyond herself: it is her projection offered to us, transcending the Heimat of her body. It is her-my-our skin.
As part of her exhibition Marina has decided to be tattooed in front of us, thus exposing herself to our gaze like a lay martyr who testifies with her body to the principles and ideals she believes in. Over the past few weeks, I have been repeatedly asked whether this performance involves feminist criticism of the phenomenon of the male gaze or if she employs it for her expressive purposes. On one hand, I believe the artist is fundamentally free to decide, without any obligations, every aspect of her performance (such as the pose she will assume, her clothes, and the way she will shape her work). On the other hand, I think she uses those very stereotypes to share her content, to be even more viewed, to be – as an artist – more alluring. The body is one of the main fields where male dominance is revealed: according to feminist critics, the female body is by definition a passive object. The performance arises from a clear understanding of these conditions and an intimate goal to overturn them. She is, therefore, not an object on display, but a subject who seeks to impose her narrative, opening a discussion on stereotypes dominance/submissiveness. Marina is not a kitten sleeping and allowing itself to be petted but a tiger that, while we watch it, stares at us.
When I see the words on Marina’s body, I do not see the body itself, but the image of a body displaying its surface, with text upon it. The artist’s work is an image formed by the overlap of two different images: the skin is the figurative element that represents itself, while the text is the image we perceive as non-figurative. We can consider the text as the primary subject, while the skin, as a canvas, is almost a landscape. Additionally, it should be noted that the body is not a blank sheet, and that, in the past, the texts Marina tattooed followed the body’s shape and were arranged symmetrically in relation to the physiology. I expect that in this case, too, the words I choose will respect this rule. Furthermore, the rule of brevity, as a text that is too long would not provide a coherent image or be physically readable. It will be an easy and short text.
As I still watch my fingers typing on the keyboard, I feel the anxiety of the responsibility that gradually lightens. I start to think, in the end, that it is Marina who speaks, while I am merely a prompter who offers suggestions from behind the scenes, someone who can at most provide occasional advice to the one on stage. I am a curator and cannot occupy the central place from which the artist is viewed. Truth is not in my head, but out in the world, on the artist’s body, on her skin, which is being coloured pink. Do you not see her-my-your skin gently unfolding before our eyes? Do you not feel my words suddenly becoming ours?
LINK
- My Skin in Your Eyes - August 2, 2024
