The princess who couldn’t bear the burden of a pea was not an artist. She is an emblem of the useless sensitivity of a blue blood. In the human garden, royalty is a hot house flower on luxury’s life supports.
Ariana Page Russell is more sensitive (and hearty) than that. She has dermatographia, which means her immune system is always on red alert for blistering news from the outside world. Even the lightest scratch will cause her capillaries to dilate and welt.
While the situation doesn’t scream opportunity, Russell turned it into one.
In 2005, she began to draw patterns and words on her skin, which she photographed.
Index
2005, C-print, 11 x 16 inches, edition of 8
Flora
2006, C-print, paper size: 20 x 24 inches, image size: 13 x 19 inches;
edition of 8
A couple of years later she turned images from her welted skin into wallpaper and temporary tattoos. Her body is her instrument, but it no longer confines itself to playing a dermatographic tune. Skin is the casing for everyone’s sack of flesh. To ward off the ills it is heir to, desperate measures are taken.
In her current exhibit at Platform Gallery, Save Face, vulnerability becomes war paint.
Gush archival pigment print, 20 x 30 inches, 2010, edition of 8
archival pigment print, 20 x 30 inches, 2010, edition of 8 (Images of her belly button bloom across her face and chest.)
Seethe
archival pigment print, 20 x 30 inches, 2010, edition of 8
archival pigment print, 20 x 30 inches, 2010, edition of 8 (Sensitive skin becomes sci-fi armor.)
Through June 29.
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