ETCHED UNDER MY SKIN

ETCHED UNDER MY SKIN, 2016
700 X 550 mm
Silk embroidery on digital print on archival paper with Swarovski crystals.

In the age of the ‘digital revolution’, AD-REFLEX’s digitally engendered world questions the concept of ‘reality’ and what is it worth on its own. Their digital-generated print on paper meets direct traces of the artist’s hand through meticulously hand-stitched embroidery and Swarovski crystals. The work started off as an x-ray of a human skull. Thereafter, by means of various photo manipulation software techniques, traces of AD-REFLEX’s own photography were used to construct a ‘post-apocalyptic landscape’ within the shape of the skull. Next the work underwent physical freezing actions in a block of ice, which were then re-photographed in a studio set-up. This process often entails repetition till the desired level of abstraction is reached, and no clear distinction between what was, and what is can be made. “Etched under my skin” engages masculinity and femininity, the ornamental and the conceptual, tradition and technology, mimicry and invention, and abstraction and representation.  Ultimately, the work fuses two conceptually gendered worlds, exploiting the tensions between the digital print on paper and that of actual stitching through the photographic print. The work gleams with a Neo-Baroque intensity, somewhere between digital space and that of material surface splendour.