If we really are here, we are exactly in a reversible fold between reality and fantasy in which everything is on the move and happens simultaneously. In the fold there is an avatar, a (proxy) representative of ourselves. Its mission is to play out an experience in Lux Valladolid’s solo show, one in which she is presenting a performance work realized virtually. Skin, as a filter, only inhabits social media. It emerges in IRL through Lux's body, transforming both entities into something we can call an Augmented Person (AP). This AP does not make sense of the difference between reality and fiction, however fundamental is legitimacy. Death and desire are denied here, as well as the believable.
Skin is an installation and a performance at the same time. In its floating behavior, it can be almost everything at once, depending on the link with others. Thus, its space is always under construction, and its search is similar to a virus: it tries to reach a stage that allows it to live.
By acquiring a cryptographic dimension, Skin becomes material and abjectual, which forces us to redefine the material, the objectual and the real because it displaces these elements from its own name. And reality, dispossessed of realism, turns into a concept and a concrete imaginary, limited by the end of the possible: the hungry.
Merlina Rañi, 2022.
customized skin
Lux's customized skin for the online exhibition wears the beauty filter from her Instagram performance.
happy nonsense
This series of artworks depicts the possible future of the person. As avatars circulating in the cryptographic dimension, these characters emerge outside of meaning, simply executing their social performance in virtual environments in which coherence is not especially required and, instead, simulation and adaptation are needed.
tragic story
As a light and ephemeral life form, Skin can “be immortal and then die” (Jean-Luc Godard). However, to perform in the metaverse, Skin must kill its unambiguous personality and continue through its potential multiplicity.
How can you kill what doesn’t exist? Like the Neuromancer, Skin “doesn’t know it doesn’t exist, but it works all the time”, executing an unconscious script to perfection, playing its own loop in a place from which it won't return. At the same time, it reproduces romantic tragedy from the Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni (which has installed her as a symbol) and it accesses a network to expand itself, to acquire a cryptographic dimension and install itself as an object.
The reality spot, where visitors could pose with a homeless person wearing a VR headset.
The booth floor was designed with scam messages from twitter.
The exhibition was showcased at Decentraland.org
