Second Skin

Second Skin is capturing gender transition – becoming a woman, both physically and through social relations. Hand-spinned and then hand-woven ropes are shaping loose fibres into solid skin parts, which function as a membrane, filtering one's inner and outer experiences. Stretched on a metal construction, these pieces of skin are hanging as if waiting at the operating theatre. The red warp is pouring down like blood, symbolising difficult and painful procedures a person is going through when starting a new life, under the second skin.

Images by Andrej Vasilenko and personal archive