Metaphor of flesh colored object in contemporary art

Abstract

In contemporary art, the works, which use skin color as a surface effect that surrounds the object to produce anthropomorphic metaphors suppressing all other physical features of the body that offer a clue to identity, offers a wide-angle view of human situations by anonymizing the subject, and thus creating a transcendent expression of gender, race, ethnicity and class categories.This approach, which eliminates the distance between bodies and creates experiences such as self-reflexivity, empathy and relationality, has gained momentum since the 1980s with the widespread use of materials whose natural structure gives skin effect. In the 1990s the studies of feminist thinkers such as Judith Butler, Susan Bordo, Elizabeth Grosz, Moira Gatens, and Gail Weiss on body images and experiences in the cultural context, and anti-patriarchal and post-structuralist approaches to gender and identity issues have also enriched the thougts on the skin. Skin representations, as a product of science and medicine in the modern period in art history, take place in our time as an independent subgenre of contemporary portraits and an object of popular visual culture.In this text, which suggests that this approach creates a sub-genre that can be defined as ‘Skin Portrait’, the works of artists that visualize skin color connotations and psychological metaphors of different human situations are examined.