Dichter op de Huid - O dubbel d

intentions of others are of vital importance; friends and foes, sexual
equals or opposites. Words are beautiful but the skin, its smell; its
status is the determining factor. Beautiful words fade once the eyes
see the skin and it is found wanting. We form our first impressions
from the skin, from how our skin is decorated, from the clothes
we cover our skin in. Skin becomes a cloth that we wash and
bathe, cover and uncover, paint, pierce and stretch and spray with
antiperspirants. Our skin has become the billboard for our identity.
We have been manipulating our surface for at least ten
thousand years. With the developments in technical possibilities
merely the means and not the intentions have changed. From the
simple application of mineral colorants on sparsely clothed skin
such as red ochre, yellow ochre, white ash and clays continuously
being discovered in archaeological sites from African caves to the
American ukurùs. A red dye which is taken from the fruit with the
same name or charcoal from Egypt which was used to make the eyes
more striking, or the green powdered malachite that was used as
eye shadow and the red ochre or carmine with which people made
their lips look fuller; these are the organic varieties of our modern
techniques of deceit. Techniques employed by the fashion industry
on a daily basis.
Less subtle and more permanent scratches, tattoos and
piercings originated thanks to our increasing technical ingenuity. As
soon as a technique becomes available, it is appreciatively made use
of on our own bodies too. The more gruesome the technique with
which we manipulate our skin, the more likely the technique was
originally used in initiation rites; rites which marked the transition
of a person from one phase of life to the next: hundreds of scratches
on the skin turned a boy into a man, patterned scars on the faces of
young girls made them women, Mandan priests allowing themselves
to be hung from hooks on their chests and backs during the Okipa
ceremony, the most holy of ceremonies for their Indian tribe. Closer
to home, artists who gouge out their own skin to prove a point.
The heavy-handed manipulation of the skin, brought us closer to
ourselves, enabled us to undergo personal development and achieve
a higher state of consciousness, whatever that may have meant to us.
healthier, smoother, tighter, shinier, matter, more coloured, more
pierced, gaunter, extremer contours, extremer extremes. We have
become obsessed.
The cosmetics of the skin have become an integral part of
our fashion image over the last dozen or so years, of our daily ritual,
of the identity we wish to portray, of the identity we wish to have.
Furthermore, everything appears to be possible. If we have past the
age of fifty we must still be sexually attractive, with tight skin. Even
though for most women, there is no biological need for this. We
have to be virile and our untameable forces have to manifest, which
is why we leave a false scent using tattoos, hooks and high-tech skins.
But who is misleading whom these days?
We are being palmed off with eternal youth in pots that
bombard our surface from two sides, extra healthy bacteria from the
inside and nanoparticles from the outside. We are made to believe in
eternal vitality, the skin remains skin with its own physics and its own
identity, regenerating or degenerating. Sooner or later everything
will perish. He who knows his skin knows himself.
About / On / IN / Under thE skin
Essay The billboard of our identity
Our daily ritual
Over the last 150 years, a true industry has developed around
seduction and deceit, but also around the sacred function of skin.
Fuel for cosmetics factories: an increase in the ability to see more
people than you could know, first in paintings, then in photos, on
television and Internet. On a daily basis we have seen many unknown
faces pass us by, we were not able to curb our obsession with seeing
any longer. Our visual perspective has increased, and with this
our desire to resemble others. Others who look better, younger,
10 Nationaal Glasmuseum Leerdam / Fort Asperen Skin Deep / Dichter op de huid 11