Skin Crafts

Affect, Violence and Materiality in Global Contemporary Art

Julia Skelly

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781350290464
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350122970
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

Skin Crafts discusses multiple artists from global contexts who employ craft materials in works that address historical and contemporary violence. These artists are deliberately embracing the fragility of textiles and ceramics to evoke the vulnerability of human skin and - in so doing - are demanding visceral responses from viewers. Drawing on a range of theories including affect theory, material feminism, skin studies, phenomenology and global art history, the book illuminates the various ways in which artists are harnessing the affective power of craft materials to address and cope with violence.

Artists from Mexico, Africa, China, the Netherlands and Indigenous artists based in the unceded territory known as Canada are examined in relation to one another to illuminate the connections and differences across their bodies of work. Skin Crafts interrogates ongoing material violence towards women and marginalized others, and demonstrates the power of contemporary art to force viewers and scholars into facing their ethical responsibilities as human beings.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Plates
• Figures
• Introduction
• 1 Narco-violence, femicide and gore capitalism: Teresa Margolles’s piercing textile works
• 2 Facing slavery and survival: Lubaina Himid’s overpainted ceramics
• 3 ‘A skin for a skin’: Sherry Farrell Racette’s textile paintings
• 4 Festering wounds and stitched scars in works by Rebecca Belmore and Nadia Myre
• 5 Concrete and caresses: The case of Doris Salcedo
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index
• Plates