Ryoko Suzuki. Masturbation,
1999.
Description:My works use myself as a subject. The reason I used myself as a subject is that I felt that since the face is the most expressive part, it could perhaps serve as the portal to communication between myself and society.This is not communication that begins with words, but a vague sensation-like element called feeling or impression that you have when you first meet someone else, and which becomes the first step toward judging the other. Regarding my face, which serves as the portal, I photographed memory, pain, restoration, and time, all overlapped. In addition, the figure made by own hand to disclose to someone else made me feel a self-torturing pleasure. I added something to the vague expression of the face, transformed myself, and literally eliminated some points that could be used to recognize me, because I wanted to have the sensation of what was left.
For me, silicone was a second skin. On the surface of the semi-transparent silicone, the texture of my skin was imprinted, and it became like the remains of layer upon layer of sloughed-off skin.
In the work, Masturbation, while they all represent a single self in a passage of time from past to present, a me with two faces (=skins) is portrayed. Covering the past with the present, the flow of time is locked in some secret room. The very acts of imprinting, erasing, locking up, and disclosing themselves become the subject of masturbation.