Tickled by the incoming press texts and photos for weeks, this exposition prickled my curiosity titillating under my skin…

In his foreword Arnoud Odding, director of the Rijks Museum Twenthe describes Silvia B.’s investigation on the “creature we call man” and explains why this exposition had to come: “…Art shows us how we see the world and our identity is shaped by our world view. Looking back on our exhibitions of the last four years, they can ultimately best be described as attempts to grasp questions such as ‘who are we’ and ‘where do we come from?” He explains how the exploration of the human form and shape, skin, coat/fur, and hair within Silvia B’s sculptures and installations is drawing the visitor into the alluring works but at the same time makes them withdrawn, repelled by repulsion. How the works are disturbing in the curtailment of freedom and giving no answers to our questions.

Werner van den Belt, art historian and lecturer in the visual arts reacts in his elaborate essay DEATH AND THE MAIDEN: on ‘Le CIRQUE’ on Silvia B’s personal struggle, the staging of unusual situations and relationships between man and beast, the colour black, the development of dolls, the mini human beings, the protagonists, body parts, and the Wunderkammer with hybrid forms into the art installations and the possible meanings they can have in our makeable society.

Sarah Cheang, Senior Tutor in the History of Design at the Royal College of Art, London, outlines in BEING HUMAN: Hair, Skin and the Work of Silvia B. the tension between the human and the non-human, the laying bare of aesthetic conventions, and confronted with the works our query on the border between animal and men.
Also good to read is the essay The SKINOVER project and La vie est si gênante, Part III, both by Silvia B., on her chase of pitiable attributes, miserable props, and embarrassing objects made of animal body parts; to archive, restore and photograph them and on including them in her body of work. “One of the questions raised by the collection concerns the difference between humans and animals. Is it mainly that thin layer of civilization that accounts for the conviction – shared by most people – that we can turn all species into knickknacks, except our own?” Her conclusion is that we, at least, call our behaviour into question.

In SKIN: The Complexion of Culture, Lidewij Edelkoort, trend forecaster and colourist, writes on nudism, clothing and the skin and casts light into the future: how our skin’s curing properties promise a new era of creation in which designers will one day grow shape and texture: the DNA-design.

Three essays describe rarities, the new mythological constructed figures, the hybrid combination between men and animal, role patterns, gender, androgyny, decadence and Weltschmerz, the freak show, beauty and the ghastliness; STRINGENDO, by Anne-Marie Poels -who studied history at the University of Antwerp and the University of Ghent and works as an editor for the Belgian contemporary art magazine H ART-; Les plus Beaux I and II, by free-lance writer Jaap Röell; and DEFORMED BEAUTY by writer Marcel Möring.
 
This esthetic book then ends with a list of exposed works and the biography.
I hope you can read this gruesomely nice book before you go to the exposition or purchase while visiting because, as Sarah Cheang puts it, “the skin is a key site of the ego” and I would like to know all about it.
Angela van der Burght