Introduction enfolded: Skin, culture and psychoanalysis

Abstract

The striking image on our book’s cover is of a sculpture by artist Catherine Heard from an installation titled Efflorescence, first exhibited in 1997 at The Power Plant in Toronto.1 We chose this artwork for its resonance with the themes, tensions and creativity striven for in the book. Efflorescence consists of several doll-like figures standing on pedestals under quiet, concentrated lighting. Displayed next to them are infants’ garments, including christening gowns, laid out and inhabited by partial torsos and disembodied limbs in a ghostly gesture of absent presence. The sculptures are each stitched together using antique fabrics and forms made from wood, wool, wire, steel and human hair. The most captivating feature of the work, however, is the tendrils, daisies, black thorn and poppy blossoms embroidered onto the “skins” of the dolls and across the folds of the garments. While perhaps unremarkable in and of themselves as subjects of traditional embroidery, the floral motifs swathe Heard’s effigies in patterns that, from a distance, resemble crops of reddened pustules, scabs, or bleeding sores: skin disease in bloom. Only when viewed up close do these shapes come into focus as delicate flowers (Heard, 2001, p. 44).