Thin Skin: Diaphanous Margins of Encounter

Abstract

This sculptural installation project seeks to engage with questions of materiality, fragility, and form. It explores sensory diadermic encounters with thin skin through sculptural processes utilising cellulose rice paper as a primary material. In the research, skin functions as a margin, a boundary that is at once containing, porous, and continually undergoing transformation. It operates as both a sensory organ and a tactile interface, a diaphanous threshold between the concept of an independent self and the world. Drawing on Buddhist teachings and a curious enquiry, the practice identifies doubt and not-knowing as generative thin spaces, sites where rigid identities soften and begin to dissolve. Fostering a mode of curiosity that remains open to sensing, encounter, and transformation, it aims to illuminate marginal spaces where meaning can begin to emerge.