Skin (review)

Skin is a stylish and evocative exhibition that deals with the surface of our bodies, our largest organ, its structure and finish, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, until death takes it apart. The suggestive exhibition architecture, designed by Jesus Moreno & Asociados, consists of large sheets of felt on visible wood structures, hanging like sutured skin on dry bones. Skin is represented here in diverse media from different ages and places: sixteenth-century anatomical engravings; latex skin garments by contemporary artist Olivier Goulet; an ancient terra-cotta votive torso with guts spilling out through a slit; early-twentieth-century popular medical film; uncannily life-like nineteenth-century waxworks; contemporary photography-based, digitally produced art. There is also real human skin: seven pieces of tattooed skin from Henry Wellcome's collection of over three hundred pieces bought in France in the 1920s; the dry skin of a curled-up Peruvian mummy; and a curious little skin-covered anatomical model with a facial expression of horror, showing white teeth in its open mouth, with writhing limbs and a gaping open rib cage.

Among all these captivating objects there was one that particularly moved me: a life-size wax model of a boy, five or six years of age, curled up on a shiny white silk cushion, naked and exposed, with glass eyes staring sadly from under half-closed eyelids, his skin covered with horrendous skin lesions. For someone like me, who has struggled with a chronic skin disorder all my life, the portrait of the suffering little boy cut right through my intellectual engagement with this smart show. But, skin being the sensitive interface between our inner selves and the outer world, there are many more objects here that have a strong, disturbing presence.

The catalog is a small but nicely designed leaflet (with surprises hidden in its folds) in which there is not much room for detailed information on the many items in the exhibition. The web site (http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/skin.aspx) is richer and contains film clips, audio, essays, and image galleries under the exhibition's thematic headings, Objects, Marks, Impressions, and Afterlives, plus objects from the Wellcome Library's collection. Why only some of the images are supplemented by full captions eludes me. The web caption for the wax model described above, for example, is "'Generalized Tinea Favosa' by Enrique Zofio, 1881. Tinea favosa is a fungal infection of the scalp and body," whereas its caption in the gallery is fuller and places it in a historical context of model making and dermatology. Thus, anachronistically, the text of the web exhibition objectifies the boy as an example of a disease just as the modeler did in his day, whereas the model itself gives the nameless boy, long since dead, a haunting presence through the indexicality of wax casting. (And the caption neglects to mention that the model is a moulage.)

Curator Javier Moscoso has used some of the conceptual strategies we have come to expect of art and anatomy shows: thematic juxtapositions of old and new artworks with scientific illustrations and artifacts and a concluding section of contemporary "cutting-edge" science, technology, and art with some interactive features. Predictable as this may sound, the show's concentration on one organ and careful choice of cultural representations, together with the relatively small space and congenial design, make this an unusually well focused and stimulating exhibition. Although some themes and subjects could have been explored in more depth, particularly sex and race, Skin is wonderful, visually rich, and analytically astute.