ESMERALDA KOSMATOPOULOS

“inhabit your body”  takes a new look at a common but nonetheless, less and less frequent gesture - that of the hand that caresses - to explore the contemporary meaning of touch and its limitations. This exploration draws it source from the concept of the skin and looks at its profound ambiguity: the skin as the place and means of communication with the Other, but also as the border that prevents us from becoming the Other; the skin as a simple body envelope, but one that can reach our deeper self just from the feel of a caress. 

 

We often hear the phrase “inhabit your body” that compares our physical presence in the world to a house. Our skin would therefore be its wall and foundation, serving both to divide and protect. Taking this metaphor of the skin as a starting point, the artist has been collecting photographs of marks she has left on the body of her partner when touching him in their intimate moments and has mixed these oversized photos of pieces of wounded skin printed on various fabrics with objects found in construction sites and demolished building. The walls, bricks, fences, ladder, metal bars mixed with the shreds of our own body envelope become the faces of our limits, giving them shape and power, sensuality and softness. 

 

Each work is inspired by a specific poem describing with words the physical and emotional dimension of touch and contains in it some words or verses of it. From pleasure to pain, from union to cannibalization, the work tells us about our human vulnerability.

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