Nina Johansson

My degree project is titled Next of Skin and explores kinship between humans and other beings on Earth. We share so many similarities, all of us little carbon-based life forms on a blue pearl in the vastness of space. But humans tend to focus on the differences, in order to justify how we treat the world and its inhabitants. My work consists of a silicone costume coloured with UV and afterglow pigments, taking inspiration from bioluminescence as wordless communication. The costume is worn by a performance artist, Shirley Harthey Ubilla, who I have filmed as she interacts with and within it. My aim is to transform Shirley into a being that is not only human, to speak about kinship and otherness. In the words of philosopher Alan W. Watts:

“You didn’t come into this world, you came out of it. Like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here”.