Skin
"Born marked."
The Artist
-
Skin opens the Feet to Foundation chapter with five symbolic portraits, each rendered with care, distance, and intention. They form a gradient, moving from the deepest tone to the lightest, not simply to represent complexion, but to reveal what is often left unsaid within families, and seen too quickly outside of them.
The Artist and The Matriarch, positioned at the beginning, anchor the lineage. They speak to legacy, labor, and cultural grounding, figures who shaped what came after but remain partially obscured by time and unspoken stories.
At the center is The Burdened One, caught between history and inheritance. He represents not only visible disability, but the unseen strain passed down: expectations, broken systems, and embodied fragility.
The Spark and The Watcher, lighter in tone, but not untouched. Their complexion may suggest ease or privilege in some eyes, but Skin challenges that assumption.
This work invites the viewer to slow down, to look again, and to question the ways we attach narrative to appearance. These works were created to hold tension between what we’ve been given and what we will become.
-
In Genesis, God formed humanity from the dust, every texture, every tone, shaped by divine hands. But what was meant to reflect unity often becomes the first point of division.
Skin asks: when does care stop at the surface? When our experiences are filtered through bias, how do we witness those made in God's image?
Christ healed beyond appearances, He saw the invisible, touched the outcast, and restored dignity where systems had failed.
“The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7
Reflection Question:
Where in your life have you made assumptions based on someones appearance, and how might God be inviting you to see differently?
The Spark
The Matriarch
The Watcher
The Burdened One
Illness doesn’t discriminate, but does the system?
Skin examines how the body is perceived, and what is often overlooked. It explores how appearance, cultural assumptions, and systemic bias shape the way care is given, and withheld.
Gradient tones evoke both internal vulnerability and the external lenses through which pain is read. Even at the surface, something deeper is written, fragile, human, and maybe already on edge.
When care begins with assumption, how long before the body starts to push back?