Olga Krysanova. Hochschule Trier. New Talent Award Nominee 2021

Name of graduation student: Olga Krysanova
Name of guiding teachers: Theo Smeets, Ute Eitzenhöfer

Nominated by Hochschule Trier , Germany

Olga Krysanova's work (Thicker) Skin goes to the very foundations of human existence. She clarifies for herself the questions of dealing with a society that is geared towards its members functioning in a certain way and grapples with what it is like when this required functioning does not suit oneself. It represents the reaction to a culture of extroversion, the discomfort that comes from it, and seeks a way to deal with it. Cutting off one's thick skin, becoming vulnerable, is an act of liberation. 
/Ute Eitzenhöfer

Summary of the Master Thesis:
My point of interest: the interconnection and interrelation of haptic physical pain and mental anguish. The metaphor of being skinned alive: the painfulness of exposure, rebirth, self-discovery. The importance and implications of touch as a way to connect with the outside world and define yourself against it. Skin is a vessel, and breaking it can be a very clean and straightforward symbol to convey the person’s inner state, both on its own and in interaction with others.
 
Skin is a very desirable border, something to protect yourself from the outside world. Emotional, sensitive people are often advised to grow a thicker skin; it’s generally suggested out of genuine desire to help and see the person suffer less because of how much the outside world impacts them. I disagree with this advice on a fundamental level. A human body is an open system: if you close the border of skin, the body dies because it’s unable to breathe. Thicker skin dulls your senses, limits the exchange with the world. It protects you, but it also isolates you. Nowadays isolation is hailed as self-sufficiency but to be alone is not something a human is designed to strive for. 

This is how I arrived at this piece. The stones were selected for their colour and patterns, which reminded me of skin; the threads are silk surgical sutures, the rest is silk and cotton. I wanted to step away from hands as a primary tactile instrument. Skin is a massive organ, and I found it a pity to deny most of it the chance to connect with the piece. The result weighs about 1.5kg, leading to a balance of physically feeling the weight and pressure on your body, but it is distributed enough that it becomes a part of you. It gives the wearer the feeling of being contained and held and surrounded the way a brooch or a necklace wouldn’t. 

The point of symbols is to ease the way of connecting with the underlying message. This is a symbol of my skin, which makes it my skin that I have painstakingly grown over the years of my life. The scars and uneven bits and mistakes that you see are mines. The sutures are mine. It has grown into me just as I have grown it on myself: my blood is its blood. It’s heavy and stifling and presses a bit too hard when I inhale, like a tight but suffocating embrace, a promise of safety in exchange for numbness. 
This world is scary, and to be open and vulnerable means to invite suffering. But to lock yourself away means a slow, joyless, lonely life that is indiscernible from death, and, to me, that’s the worse option. 

So you’ve grown yourself a thicker skin: what next? 

My choice is to open up, to peel it off, to hold it in my hands. This is the weight that I carry, my misguided pity for myself, my protection from my fears. But it’s only alive as long as it’s grown into me; like any removed organ, it dies without me. Hold it in your hands, if you can: feel its weight. This is the weight that we all carry. 
/Olga Krysanova

More work and contacts:
Email: tarnin.austa@gmail.com
Website: https://okrysanova.wixsite.com/home

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