Images by Ivo Rainha

2023. Textil, Ton. 8000 x 4000 cm
2023. textil, clay. 8000 x 4000 cm

BodySkin.
Touching/BeTouched by threads and clay of life

“THE SKIN WAS IMITATING THE SKY AS BEST IT COULD.”[1]

In this artistic residence, Judith Klemenc’s process focuses on a system of relationships between the body and the rest. Body-matter, body-space, body-place, body-body, body-skin, body-gesture, body-perception, body-knowledge, body-image, in short, body-relationship.
All the work is performance.
As a metaphor, flesh and skin are presented. The skin, the integumentary system (a set of tissues that compose the human skin and its related structures), plays a fundamental role in human survival, acting as both a barrier and a receptor simultaneously. It is responsible for sensory functions, including touch, pressure, cold, heat, and pain…
The proposal was to act between the Firing of clay and the Sewing of textiles, and it is through the body-skin (both her own and others’) that she also mediates this. Everything becomes reified in this bodily implication, combined with the memories of the community and a region that has been shaped its character and landscape by textiles and, in the past, pottery.
Even before arriving in Guimarães, the readings and stories that the artist unveils about the textile factories and the trauma linked to the history of textiles pique her interest.
In the city, walking through the streets, the threads, the movements, and the sounds of the factory looms leave indelible marks that manifest in the conceptualization and materialization of her work.
Clay and textiles are materials with their own organic qualities, sharing some aspects in common. Klemenc has been including them in her practice for some time, and three essential conditions matter to her regarding these materials: they are natural materials, extracted from the earth, establishing a direct connection with nature; highly moldable, readily absorbing the marks we wish to impress upon them, giving them an enormous tactile quality capable of presenting themselves as a second skin; and finally, carrying within them history and tradition, making them materials imbued with cultural significance.
“BodySkin.Touching/Be Touched by threads and clay of life” summons the textile threads left over from industrial production (cut edges, remnants of existence, and memories of perfectly woven pieces). She considers them memory threads capable of generating new spaces guided by her body. A dance pair. The entire act is performative from the beginning and arises from memories, creating new ones. They are glimpses of the past that now materialize and form the possibility of a future.
The artist’s collaborative process with the community of Lares da Santa Casa da Misericórdia is one of revelation. Stories and memories are shared, and senses are heightened. Judith proposed the contact of materials always in connection with the body. Fresh clay acts as a receptor for memory threads, impressed through gesture. These are complementary processes – identity-related, of annihilation, and consequent transformation into life. What remains are memories of threads embedded in clay, roaming through a process of negative/positive through firing and engobe ( slip) . The pieces of tiles resulting from this process will generate new paths where the lives and stories of each one blend.
One’s drawing only is completed  by the other’s drawing.
Thus, this new space created by so many elements is proposed to us, and we are compelled to belong to it.
Finally, in an unrepeatable moment, Judith’s expanded body, affective and emotional, social and spiritual, bursts forth once again in this created place, and her shadowy skin engages in dialogue with the moving image, with sound, and with the place. The video performance ( that happened just in the opening) adds the sky and the skin of this territory, and that sky will be capable of intensifying the human experience and our ability to perceive the world in a deeper or more intense way, and only here does the performance become complete.
As in the poem of Nava,  “The skin was imitating the sky as best it could.” [2]

Cláudia Melo
July 2023

[1] Luis Miguel Nava: “The Sky Under the Entrails”. Genre: Poetry. Publisher: Assírio & Alvim. 2020
[2] Luis Miguel Nava: “The Sky Under the Entrails”. Genre: Poetry. Publisher: Assírio & Alvim. 2020