ANOTHER SKIN
2015
Another Skin explores the ways in which we construct and alter our appearance — and how those changes can shape both our identity and the way we feel about ourselves.
From makeup and clothing to cosmetic procedures, appearance can be modified according to how we wish to be seen. Another Skin treats this process as something physical: an identity that can be attached to the face, removed and replaced.
The collection consists of two series. In Wearing Makeup, oversized Swarovski crystals transform the features of clown makeup into jewellery, allowing makeup itself to be worn as adornment. In Putting on Someone’s Identity, facial features belonging to other people are laser-engraved onto leather and placed over the wearer’s own face, creating a shifting combination of self and other.
Each piece simultaneously conceals and reveals the wearer, suggesting identity not as something fixed, but as something that can be constructed, performed and worn.
Wearing Makeup
Gold-plated brass, Swarovski crystals
Putting on Someone’s Identity
Gold-plated brass, vegetable-tanned leather, reflective surface
Another Skin developed from CLOWN, an earlier work in which Shinzato explored the idea of wearing makeup as jewellery. While CLOWN used small crystals almost like paint to construct an exaggerated mouth, the starting point for Another Skin was to reverse this approach — using individual, oversized crystals as facial features themselves.
This became Wearing Makeup, a series based on the eyes, nose, cheeks and tears of a clown. As the series developed, the idea of wearing a different face led to a broader question: if jewellery could change the appearance of the wearer, could it also allow them to put on another identity?
This question led to Putting on Someone’s Identity, in which fragments of other people’s faces are engraved onto leather and worn over the wearer’s own features.
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