Fleshed Out
The Fleshed Out Project addresses issues about the representation of aging women and self-portraiture. The series began when I asked myself two questions: if I made self-portraits at the age of 84, what would they look like? What would you not want to see? As a culture we have an aversion to looking at the wrinkled truths of aging. This current work is a new chapter in a career which has confronted taboos of society and the body.
I find my wrinkled skin to be both fascinating and repulsive, so I flaunt it, substituting photos of my wrinkled flesh for smooth marble drapery on images of portrait busts and statues. In place of the statue’s face, I paste an image of myself. Photos of my wrinkled neck, hands and arms become stuff to work with, a material I manipulate in Photoshop, to use as drapery. My sagging, crepey skin mocks the perfection of marble, a bold, vulnerable, often humorous confrontation with the evidence of aging.