Skins: Mixed Media Installation, 2009.

Art Gallery 1, National Institute of Education, Singapore.

Skins consists of over two hundred objects, made and found.

Izumi Ueda Yuu

My mother and my grandmother believed that, if you keep a snakeskin in your wallet, money will flow in endlessly. I could never understand why they could believe such a story since they always had snake skins in their wallets but they never had enough money. The only explanation I can think of is that they enjoyed having the beauty of the snakeskin in their wallets. Also the mysterious knowledge that the snake had shed its skin and gone somewhere might have represented freedom to them. One day, my son showed me his scratched knee. It was a half-day old scab, getting brownish but you could still see the pinkish-red flesh underneath the half dried crust. He cried when he had to sit in the hot bath. His pain is still a vivid memory. And, when scabs dry, they itch so much you have to scratch them, which starts them bleeding again. They crack and won't heal for a long time. Skin protects what's inside. It separates inside from out. It vibrates in the light. Sometimes it disguises what's inside. Still the surface is the expression of the inside. I want to tell stories about what is on the other side of the skin so your eyes can see. The difficulty is I must use the surface and it’s only our mind that can see beneath. This exhibition explores those things inside my skin and is dedicated to my father who lived until he was ninety-five years old.