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“A body becomes an index of passing time. Skin reveals how bones shift, muscles loosen, freckles and wrinkles form, and bruises appear. I am interested in this as a fashion of skin, including the way a blush decorates one’s cheek, freckles form constellations on an arm, or hair creates sheen on skin’s matte surface. Skin also protects us while revealing internal emotions, offering a translucent space for adornment.”

Ariana Page Russell’s skin is very sensitive and she blush easily. She has dermatographia, a condition in which one’s immune system exhibits hypersensitivity, via skin, that releases excessive amounts of histamine, causing capillaries to dilate and welts to appear (lasting about thirty minutes) when the skin’s surface is lightly scratched. This allows her to painlessly draw patterns and words on her skin, which she then photographs. The reaction is involuntary, much like the uncontrollable nature of a blush. Recently she has turned some of the images she makes of patterns made from skin into temporary tattoos, adorning her skin in a different way than drawing on it directly. Scanning the cut photographs of her skin adapted from clothing and wallpaper, she turns them into temporary tattoos, affixing them to her body. These tattoos become an intimate fashion, as their own sort of clothing, and an additional translucent layer for the fashion of skin. "I am investigating where one surface ends and another begins, the bloom of adornment, and how shifting exteriors reveal as they conceal.”

Ariana graduated from the University of Washington with a MFA in Photography in 2005 and has had a solo exhibitions at Platform, MagnanMetz (New York, NY), and Lisa Sette Gallery (Scottsdale, AZ). She has also exhibited at Some Space Gallery, SOIL Gallery, and 4Culture Gallery in Seattle.

a spectral glimpse (group)
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Save Face (solo)
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Elles : Platform (group)
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BLINDS / BLOUSE (two person)
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Interior Optics (solo)
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Available work
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