In her photographic series Affleure de Peau, Claire Artemyz explores a universal act that has transcended time, civilizations, and territories: tattooing. For what is universal is not the design inscribed on the skin, but the act itself. What is at stake, at a deeper level, is the desire to modify one's physical envelope and, through it, one's identity. How can we explain why such a violation of the skin—voluntarily piercing the skin without anesthesia or vital necessity—is so widespread? This human behavior toward the skin remains deeply troubling. While tattooed people give many reasons for getting tattooed, an essential part of it remains mysterious and, above all, impossible to put into words. It is this elusive motivation that Claire Artemyz has sought to make perceptible through images, where words fail. She has used the camera as a microscope, getting as close as possible to the moment when the needle pierces the body's envelope, allowing blood and lymph to escape before injecting ink. The motif is deliberately set aside in order to penetrate the universality of the act.
The result is images that, in turn, elude immediate interpretation, much like the deeper reasons for tattooing. Through the use of macro photography, reality becomes abstract and opens up to a poetic otherworld, where landscapes, organic and mineral forms emerge. The texture of the skin evokes sometimes rock, sometimes glacier. This loss of visual reference points broadens the field of interpretation, inviting the viewer to feel rather than understand.
Affleure de peau does not seek to explain, but rather to reveal. The series unveils a profoundly mysterious dimension of humanity: an ancestral gesture that engages the body, identity, and intimacy, and whose meaning, like the images themselves, remains deliberately open.
