Ahlina Kay-Lynn Smart

This project was made out of a desire to explore latex as a material. I liked how skin-like, transparent, and raw it could be. I wanted to see what latex could teach me through its inherent qualities and see if there was something the material could reveal about myself.

As I worked, I started to notice just how human it felt. More than just a surface, I realized that it has a kind of personality. It’s free-flowing and adapts well, but also becomes a product of its environment. I made the latex sheets by rolling thin layers of latex milk across a larger leather sheet. Like memory, the latex held onto the texture of the mother leather, keeping its imprint as a permannt reminder of its origin.

The more time I spent with the skins, the more I saw myself reflected back at me.

Holding traces of what it’s been through, felt deeply human, and from there, I saw so much more potential. I started embedding different materials inside the skin, seeing if I could make my internal realities become more visible. I chose materials like hair, teeth, eggshells, and plants to externalize what I felt I was made up of. Thinking of ancestry, lineage, fragility, the inevitability of loss, growth, and renewal. The act of embedding became a way to think about how nature, history, and memory intertwine. I keep coming back to the tension between being bound to nature and realizing that nature is equally bound to us.