The SKIN & BONES SHOW,
June - November 2004
GALLERY

We aim to prove an axiom: “We don’t know the first thing about skin and bones.”
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These fundamental elements of life become quixotic under scrutiny. Skin, forming our bodies’ edges, operates as a barrier, but just as much a porous membrane, perpetually trading material with the world such that we no longer can pinpoint an “edge.” Bones, those most stable structures upon which skins hang like fashionable silks, undergo complete regeneration every 7 years. And this is just vertebrate life under unmediated circumstances.
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What about the skin-bones of the insects? What of the human propensity for wearing the other animals’ skins? What of our synthetic bones and prostheses? Finally, how is the threshold of death central to our investigation of skin and bones in a museum setting? What strange life does death unleash in our taxidermic objects?
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