ABOUT
SKIN IN THE GAME
Presented by Palm Heights
Skin in the Game is a collective offering, a coming out, a post-pandemic romp. It is about touch, risk, desire and skin—the potential, vulnerability and risk contained therein—as both a boundary to protect from danger, and a porous border to receive.
To consider skin is to consider the potential harm that might be done to it— there is an inherent violence, as well as the promise of pleasure, that comes with being in one’s skin.
How might we explore and understand our skin now– the site of potential transmission, of hand-sanitized stickiness, of lost contact. What can touch be now? The ecstasy and climax of it— la petite mort, the little death (of self?) and the potential union with the other.
To have “skin in the game” of course implies monetary investment, as well as political or social investment in a desired outcome—it underscores that one has something to lose. The phrase turns on the link between skin and currency— an economics of the physical—an understanding that the body is what we always place on the line.
We can buy and sell eroticism whether it be sex work, pornography, kink, or advertising, and our cultural narratives around skin are not easily extracted from their sexual currency.
It is impossible to disentangle currency and colorism—or ignore the way that racialized skin has both built capital and been manipulated for profit, Malcolm X wrote “...who in the world's history ever has played a worse ‘skin game’ than the white man?”
‘Game,’ whether that be in terms of sport and athleticism, or the hunt for wild game bleed through into the language—a framework to explore the eroticizing and exoticizing of bodies that we consume visually. In our pursuit of ‘game’ we find the vestiges of our own bestiality, alongside a yearning to transcend the limitation of our very bodies. Animal skins, hunting and the sexual proclivities of ‘furries’ are offered perhaps a glimpse at interspecies transgression—towards a trans-human future.
Tattooing, scarification and the mortification of the flesh underscore both the sanctity and profanity of the body. Our most precious idols, biblical scenes, and illustrations of religious piety are often quite close to an iconography of BDSM. Torture and pain such close bedmates with spiritual awe, awakening and transcendence.
Skin in the Game is about power, danger, currency, play, joy, indulgence... as well as the taboo, the voyeuristic, the hedonistic, the violating and the pleasurable.
Artists included here explore the edges of the erotic. Their works mark the margins of a hungering. Their ‘edging’ implies the sought-after climax that doesn’t necessarily arrive... they point towards our most intimate and yet never name it. The artworks on view are an offering to exfoliate the exoskeletons of our collective desire. These are notes on transmission; as well as the barriers— and possibilities—of our skin. There are no answers here but rather a series of questions about where we might find connections and entry points to understand the skin we live in, skins that shed and are scarred, skins that shiver in pain, in pleasure.
Poet and novelist Ocean Vuong writes “Is that what art is? To be touched thinking what we feel is ours when, in the end, it was someone else, in longing who finds us?” These works of art transmit feeling, they offer us porousness so that we might reach out and feel (with) each other in unadulterated and perhaps ecstatic touch.
— Zoe Lukov, curator
PRESS RELEASE
ZOE LUKOV
Zoe Lukov is a curator, producer, and writer. Formerly chief curator of Faena Art in Miami Beach and in Buenos Aires, Lukov conceived of and produced both the first and second Faena Festivals in 2018 and 2019. In addition, she organized major solo exhibits by internationally recognized artists throughout the Faena Districts. She is a founding board member of Desert X, the non-profit site-specific exhibition based in California and recently produced a documentary about Desert X 2021 that made its premiere at the Getty Museum and broadcasts on PBS in November.
She produces independent curatorial projects, among them the well-received Fair, an alternative, all-women, non-commercial art fair that took place in Miami at Brickell City Centre in 2017. She got her start in the art world working for Rashida Bumbray at The Kitchen in New York, Jeffrey Deitch at MOCA Los Angeles and Franklin Sirmans on Prospect 3, the New Orleans biennial. She is a Fulbright scholar and a graduate of Oberlin College.
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PALM HEIGHTS
Founded by creative director Gabriella Khalil, Palm Heights is the first all-suite boutique hotel on Grand Cayman—a lush and luxurious beachfront restorative estate. Bringing a dose of sophistication and polychromatic whimsy to the white sands of Seven Mile Beach, this 52-suite hideaway has earned exalted status among culture and design lovers seeking respite in the Caribbean.
The 1970s charm and aesthetic, wellness and cultural offerings are all nourished by the year-round arts and choreography residencies—a program that nurtures and accommodates international creators by providing space for them to create without limits and explore the multiplicity of cultural currents within the Caribbean. Palm Heights showcases and hosts artists, athletes, musicians, writers, academics, and other individuals who are actively contributing to the development of narratives in contemporary culture as part of the Open Palm Residency Program. The program builds on an existing multicultural base in Grand Cayman, an island that is home to a population of only 60,000 but over 130 nationalities.
The cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural program hosts a calendar of dinners and performances that explore dialogues and influences on the Caribbean identity, culture and its natural environment and important global matters as well as offering residency spaces and support. Palm Heights supports arts and culture around the world by funding exhibitions, performances and new commissions that align with their mission to encourage cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary collaboration and conversation.
Bunker arts space recognized
Special thanks goes to The Bunker Art Space for generously lending works to the exhibition
In Kind Support
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