IS THIS WHAT WE WANTED? / FOREVER MARKS

                                                                                                                       

The project IS THIS WHAT WE WANTED? / FOREVER MARKS  was created in 2023 during a six-month Erasmus exchange at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. Project was influenced by French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu and his book, The Skin-Ego.












Referring to psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu and his theory of the
mothering environment, skin has a metaphoric role in psychic development. According to Anzieu, skin has the purposes of
containment, protection, and communication.

During the child's oral stage, the "attachment drive" is fulfilled by
relying on the mother's skin. If this drive is fulfilled, the skin's purpose
will be internalised by the child after the separation. However, this
process can be disturbed by each distancing moment triggering
anxiety that may not be overcome.

A series of performative screenprints on skin comprise an autobiographical work that explores themes of loss, attachment,
and a questioning of the mothering figure and its archetype.
Prints depicting an ultrasound of an ovarian cyst mock the maternal
role in the aspect of "giving" and "gifting" and the inability to do so.

IS THIS WHAT WE WANTED? encourages ambiguity, allowing a wide range of possibilities to perceive the work.

“We grasp external space through our bodily situation.  A "corporeal or postural schema" gives us at every moment a global, practical, and implicit notion of the relation between our body and things, of our hold on them. A system of possible movements, or "motor projects " radiates from us to our environment. Our body is not in space like things; it inhabits or haunts space. It applies itself to space like a hand to an instrument, and when we wish to move about we do not move the body as we move an object. We transport it without instruments as if by magic, since it is ours and because through it we have direct access to space. For us the body is much more than an instrument or a means; it is our expression in the world, the visible form of our intentions. Even our most secret affective movements, those most deeply tied to the humoral infrastructure, help to shape our perception of things.”

― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics