Man Made Materials series, 1998

digital print, framed, ca. 12 cm x 17 cm

Is it possible to analyze images dominated by Black skin without a primary focus on the obvious fact of race and, particularly, Blackness? This is the question the photographic series Man Made Materials asks its observers, the conundrum it confronts us with. The Black-and-white self-portraits zoom in on the fragmented, black skin of the artist’s buttocks, toes, hands, lips, and other unrecognizable body parts. In this way, they show, in maximum close-up and perfectly centered, the bodily feature that, since the beginning of the 18th century, has been considered the primary racial marker.

And yet Man Made Materials resists being reduced only to its chromatic or representational qualities. Against all odds, it moves its observers to a point where Blackness recedes as the sole or even central focus. While it remains right in front of us, it is no longer the only thing we see—no longer the only lens through which we think. The closer we move toward the photographs—an inevitability, given their minuscule scale—the more attuned we become to its materiality. What once appeared as a flat, monochromatic surface reveals itself, on closer inspection, as a richly textured skin—at times rough and bumpy, at others smooth and flat. Up close, skin reclaims itself not only as a signifier of identity but as matter too.

This is intriguing—and delicate.

By zeroing in on material qualities, the series invites the audience to meditate on all that makes the skin singular, irreducible and strange: the cracks, mounds, folds, creases, bumps, hollows, and ever-meandering lines. And in doing so, it draws them into a haptic mode of perception, where looking becomes a way of touching—where the eyes seem to function as extensions of the fingers.
Reading Man Made Materials through the material qualities of the image neither diminishes nor negates the importance of more conventional approaches centered on Blackness and race. On the contrary, it complicates and complements them. It prevents the series from being reduced to a simplistic portrayal of a literal part of Peña’s identity, challenging the racial structures that tend to confine Black artists to autobiographical or ethnographic frames. Only a viewer sensitized to the dynamic interplay of tone and texture, visuality and materiality, optical and haptic, can grasp the work’s complexity. And only such attunement guards against the dangers of racial reductionism and colorblindness or the failure to recognize expressions of singularity.

digital print, ingelijst, ca. 12 cm x 17 cm

Een focus op Zwartheid en ras lijkt onvermijdelijk bij het bekijken van de fotoserie Man Made Materials. De zwart-wit zelfportretten zoomen in op de Zwarte huid van het lichaam van de kunstenaar, waarbij in extreme close-up en exact gecentreerd dat ene kenmerk wordt getoond dat vaak wordt beschouwd als hét kenmerk van ras.

Ondanks de directe en indringende confrontatie met Zwarte huid, dagen Peña’s foto’s de toeschouwer uit om zich niet te beperken tot een louter chromatische benadering. Door de aandacht te vestigen op de textuur van de huid, nodigen ze uit tot een diepere intellectuele én zintuiglijke verkenning van haar materialiteit. Zo stellen ze, op gedurfde wijze, dat huid zowel raciaal kenmerk als materie kan zijn.