Skin Deep

French installation artist Martina’s exhibition devoted to musings on the skin is housed in a hammam deep within the Museum of Marrakech, a stately building in the Medina originally constructed in the early 19th century as a private residence for a minister of defense. Before becoming a Museum, the home had a second incarnation as the first girls’ school in Marrakech.

Skin seems an appropriate subject for an exhibition in a space devoted to the sluffing, cleaning and ministering of the skin. The hammam is made up of six interlocking rooms with lofty arched ceilings that are pierced to allow natural daylight to animate the space. The floors and walls are decorated with beautiful, worn zellij tile work, and intricate lanterns throw shadows that meander about the spare rooms. It is hot inside the hammam and though not yet noon when we arrive, our own skin pricks an instant sweat upon entering its chambers.

Skin is alive. It is translucent, revealing a pulse, a rush of blood beneath its surface. It reacts to heat and cold and emotion, flushing with embarrassment, or pinching nervous goose bumps. Skin bares the history of its wearer – birthmarks, freckles from too much sun, scars and clumsy bruises, fingerprints that match no other’s. Skin is deep.

Martina’s sculpture installations are much the same. Crafted of fine gauze, like the kind you’d wrap around burned skin, they are at once ephemeral and commanding pieces. She has taken skeins of the gauze and painted them in vibrant colors – vermillion, aquamarine, gold – and then stitched them together with delicate copper thread in shapes that resemble a deconstructed jacket, a battle-worn flag. The sculptures, which range in size from a few feet square to one that’s just shy of ten feet, are suspended on eyebrow-shaped copper hangers, like pieces of exquisite laundry drying on a clothesline. As the sun passes over the hammam, the pieces glow in warm and cool tones as if lit from within. The varying thickness of the paint that she has applied lends dimension to the gauze and despite its fluid, wispy appearance, the material is hard and almost plastic to the touch.

Martina calls herself a plasticienne, a moniker she’s coined to describe her art, which isn’t quite painting, nor sculpture, but more a multi-media installation, an experience. She is as vibrant as her work, with a corkscrew curly red bob of hair, wide smile, chic layered tunics and chunky, interesting jewelry. She is warm and appreciative, happy to discuss her work but savvy enough to let visitors amble through the space taking in the exhibition on their own.

After forty minutes, we are wilted from the heat of the hammam and retreat to the street, where a whisper breeze wicks the sweat from our skin and provides a moment of cool. Although we feel a daily connection to artistry, walking through the souks or visiting various workshops, we’re happy to have seen our first art exhibition in Marrakech, and to have found it so beautiful and inspired.