We need new skin. It could be something like fur, like the scales of a snake, like the downy hairs of a plant, like glowing glass. It obscures our previous...
We need new skin. It could be something like fur, like the scales of a snake, like the downy hairs of a plant, like glowing glass. It obscures our previous category just as manipulating one of the genes leads to a tomato with a moth gene and a sheep with a frog gene," reads Japanese artist MAYUMI HOSOKURA'S statement for her latest project, New Skin. "I am a man as well as a woman, and I can be an animal, plant, or dead matter."
Taking the famed scholar, Donna Haraway's, ideas of blurring boundaries between a multitude of bodies – man and woman, human and animal, living and non-living beings – she breaks down boundaries in favour of hybrid organisms. Drawing on feminist theory and current technological innovations, New Skin anticipates the future of the body in a time of advancing digital and bio-technologies.
LOVE Magazine: SELFIES AND SEX: ARTIST MAYUMI HOSOKURA IS RE-THINKING THE MALE GAZE [12 Apr 2020] https://www.thelovemagazine.co.uk/article/selfies-and-sex-artist-mayumi-hosokura-is-re-thinking-the-male-gaze
Publications
New Skin by Mayumi HOSOKURA Paperback with Japanese fold, printed with metallic inks ISBN: ISBN 978-1-912339-73-0 Dimensions: 30 x 30 cm https://a-i-gallery.com/store/publications/9-new-skin-mayumi-hosokura/
"Taking the famed scholar's ideas of blurring boundaries between a multitude of bodies – man and woman, human and animal, living and non-living beings – she [Hosokura] down boundaries in favour of hybrid organisms." – The LOVE Magazine
"Hosokura’s latest publication breaks down the rigid binaries and definitions that give shape to our conception of what it means to be human" – British Journal of Photography
Deeply affected by Donna Haraway’s writing, New Skin is Mayumi Hosokura’s proposition for a new way of thinking about identity, the body and desire. Its origin is one single, large-scale digital collage which Hosokura created using clippings from old gay magazines, statues, and found selfies, together with her own photographs — specifically choosing to use images of male figures only. Subsequently cut into 12 separate pieces the resulting fragments blur the boundaries between man and woman, human and animal, living and non-living beings; hybrid works that reimagine what it means to be human and which unsettle social conventions of desire. Drawing on feminist theory and current technological innovations, New Skin anticipates the future of the body in a time of advancing digital and bio-technologies.