a biopsy of dissociation & camouflage through polaroid still lives ​mainly composed of photographs of male friends but featuring a few self portraits punk skin borrows from the victorian post mortem photography aesthetic to (un)embody the unhomely ghost point of view the dysphoric sensation of navigating life without inhabiting the body this series captures those transitional times & spaces where neither the body nor identity is fully claimed yet only rehearsed hated or fantasised through mimicry shame erasure punk skin is a composition sculpted from everyday items corporate shirt tattoos & piercings raw meat foundation false lashes trash bags contact lenses spaghetti & tomato beans adidas underwear through their clinical détournement the project interrogates the gendered & alienating power of such artefacts when they no longer serve nourish beautify but conceal or erase it emerged from the absurdity of the painful beauty shaped by loneliness & dysphoria revealing the strangeness of femininity contact lenses reminded me of the waxy pus filled moulds of dermatological diseases lashes extensions spider legs & spaghetti the burst veins of skinless faces foundation in particular became my nemesis i used to steal my mothers vitiligo concealer to cover my acne but soon i grew anxious about being seen without it this created a deep dependency on makeup born from both the shame of my natural skin & the urge to conceal the inner feeling of not being a girl & failing at femininity i spent more than fifteen years hidden beneath this empty skin toned mask it is not a series of portraits but a cumulative slow visual fugue leading towards disappearance while confronting the human need to be seen transition here isnt the arrival line but the erosion of the self through repetition camouflage failure punk skin means being flayed alive losing your identity & turning your skin inside out to wear it as a coat or armor because what other choice do you truly have i started taking polaroids at nineteen under warhols influence how can one photograph others intimately & use the instantaneity of the medium to disappear polaroids are shy peoples thing once taken they exist without their author they no longer belong to them this is how i feel about my body the pictures are titled like diary entries blending clinical language fantastical imagery dark humor & poetic longing to reveal the eerie tension in daily scenes & the quiet melancholy of not having chosen ones body & the wish to inhabit other ones the punk in punk skin refers to silent fights for existence & to the refusal of erasure without needing to exist fully or be embodied it asks how one can disappear without vanishing how beauty might be inhabited as something broken horrific ghostlike & how you can still be here somewhere in the eerie​​