Latex Skin Petals

As I peel the latex from my skin, it is hard not to notices the way the skin on my hands moves and folds. The thought of my hands beginning to age and wrinkle is admittedly something I worry about, perhaps something which first occurred in childhood as witches and villians in movies and story books are often portrayed as having thin, withering, wrinkled hands. Nonetheless, I want to use my hands to create some petals, I know they will produce interesting textures. Besides, the point of this project is to face and reflect upon my own self-stigma related to this insecurity: I have to do this. 

 

The flat of my hand is relatively smooth, resulting in rather boring casts. Instead, I turn my hand and begin to use the palm. Peeling the latex and examining the deep crevices is initially quite frightening, I am literally faced with my own ageing, something I have been taught to be afraid of since I was young.  Eventually though, I can begin to appreciate the pieces as art, after all, these are more interesting to look at. Surprisingly quickly I find myself transitioning once again from fearful to excited: I even begin scrunching my hands to create deeper, more dramatic lines in different patterns. Although beautiful, these pieces are rather impractical to produce: I only have two palms with enough surface area to create one cast each at a time. Scrunching the hand reduces air flow to the latex, making the drying process slower in comparison to the other body parts. It is also impossible to apply the latex to multiple parts of the body whilst waiting for the latex on the palms to dry without damaging it in the process.

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Moving from the hand to the fingers, I learn that it is rather difficult to pick up the fingerprints: to be able to capture these thin details the latex has to be really thin, but if it is thin, it is more likely to rip, resulting in a ruined cast. Frustrated, I flip my hand to access the tops of my fingers, applying latex to the knuckles. At first these pieces are also quite anxiety inducing, being forced to stare at my own wrinkled skin, but slowly I realise they are incredibly interesting to look at. Like the knee, these can be bent and manipulated to create different patterns and textures. Each cast is very small, drawing you in to take a closer look, something we tend to avoid doing with stigmatised skin.