Extension de Peau
Extension of the Skin (Extension de peau) was born from the recognition of the layers that migration has left upon me: the skin of the territory that shaped me and the skin of the one that now receives me. In this dialogue, the images synchronize in a breathing exercise between two geographies —Bogotá and Nantes—, between two bodies that seek, touch, and reinvent each other.
Weaving of lithographies on synthetic fabric - 2023
Each photograph is an invisible seam between past and present, between the self I once was—reflected in a local, white, privileged yet tormented body—and the migrant self I am becoming: a racialized body, an oppressed being that is freeing itself and preparing to be reborn. Photography is my way of weaving distances, of creating continuity between who I was and who I am becoming. In this series, the landscape is not merely a backdrop but an extended skin; and the skin, in turn, is a territory where the memories of displacement, desire, and transformation are imprinted.
The work consists of two lithographs made from analog photographs taken in Colombia and France —in the forests of Nantes and the Andean páramo— functioning as mirrors between two worlds. Both reveal the same search: that of a body that exposes itself, adapts, liberates, and blossoms in another geography, while still belonging to the former one. There is also a third piece: a fabric woven between these two realities, allowing them to meet, to know one another, to merge—just as the homeland and the destination merge in the unconscious of a migrant.
This proposal speaks of migration not only as displacement, but as a process of intimate reconstruction—a dialogue between what is left behind and what is found; between rootedness and freedom.
