Skin

In the beginning, MOMO was a sculptural object – nothing more. She was sewn from unbleached cotton muslin which had been impregnated with Liquid Light, a photographic emulsion. Left in the dark to dry, images were then projected onto these squares of material. Though I now wonder about my choice of images, I chose a woman’s nude body in a desert landscape, hands in surgical gloves and a woman’s feet, shackled.

I had been thinking about the body and the mind - their vulnerability, as well as their ability to repair and protect. The pieces of material were developed, fixed and dried before actual sewing began. The process of sculpting from sewn material and batting was challenging on several accounts. It was an additive process, rather than subtractive, scale was a definite challenge, and the weight of her appendages stressed the lightweight material. As I sewed and repeatedly adjusted for measurements, I thought about many things. How many square inches of skin are on the human body? Is skin really our largest organ? What qualities compose this fragile, yet miraculous barrier between a human being and the exterior world?

At this point, I would have been content to leave her as a static, sculptural object that was simply a large doll. I was reluctant to take her beyond this pristine state, as it would likely lead to some painful introspection. As I began to apply text to her skin – I realized the emergence of an alter-ego. She took on the name that my children had always called me. Using her skin as a journal, I examined my interior nature, my burdens, gifts and demons. She became tattooed with light text describing my qualities, flaws and challenges. On some very naïve, saccharine level, I thought, “If only humans could read one another....”

Later, as people encountered and inquired about MOMO, I became more interested in the interpretations of others. Curiously, I found that people recognized something of their own story in MOMO, projecting their burdens and speaking freely about them – to me, a total stranger. Astounded at the common threads in human stories, MOMO took on the shared text of other people’s lives, in addition to my own.