Manel Esclusa

“What is deepest in man is the skin,” wrote Paul Valéry.

 

Thus, psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu developed the concept of the Skin-ego: the idea that our mind needs the body to define itself. Just as the skin defines, protects, and contains us, our identity is structured as a flexible boundary between our inner world and the outside. The Skin-ego implies a homology between the functions of the Ego and those of our bodily envelope. He considers, therefore, that the Ego, like the skin, is structured as an interface that allows for the enrichment of the notions of boundary, limit, and container.

 

The face is the most visible part of this boundary. But what happens when the gaze does not remain on the surface?

 

Manel Esclusa’s Scantac project pierces through this skin. Using Computed Axial Tomography (CAT) —a medical technology designed to reveal the interior of the organism—, the work challenges traditional conventions of portraiture and self-portraiture to venture into unknown territory: the internal geography of the body. Is the skull the negative of our face? Is it under the skin where the image of our Self is hidden?

 

Scantac is, according to the author, a reflection on identity, perception, and the limits of photographic representation in order to explore the possibility of representing the human being beyond their visible appearance. The result is a series of images that oscillate between anatomy, landscape, and the cosmos. The anatomical slices evoke cartographies, geological formations, or astronomical images, dissolving scale references and suggesting correspondences between the structure of the human body and the forms of the universe.

 

Manel Esclusa thus proposes a reflection on the visible and the hidden, expanding the notion of the self-portrait toward a poetic exploration of contemporary identity.