Carmen Mariscal

 Carmen Mariscal

 Skin Site (2024)

 video (running time: 2’38’’) and wallpaper, photographs adhered to carboard and wood 

Skin-site is a sculptural and moving image installation that records the process of peeling off the layers of wallpaper in my grandparent’s house  prior to its demolition.

The skin is a place; it is our first means to communicate with others, a site to establish meaningful relationships, and a surface where the traces of these relationships are inscribed. In our skin-site dwells the memory of our lives. Likewise, wallpaper bears the marks of people and time, such as scratches, spills on its surface in the same manner that our skin carries its scars and wrinkles. 

By ripping off the wallpaper and touching it, my skin carries out one of its phenomenological functions: to record.

Throughout my embodied actions here and in other architectural sites, I touch and feel with my skin and limbs to recall and think through and with  the skin.