In Your Own Skin
In Your Own Skin is a worldwide art project inviting authenticity and happiness, connecting us all by revealing our hidden truths.
What hidden truth would YOU share?
In the film, video portraits capture the unique moment when a person shares a secret, summarized in a long-hidden word or phrase that is then painted onto their skin. Each of these powerful moments releases a generous contribution to the world, a buoyant reminder of living fully and the beauty and strength that comes from facing and embracing our vulnerability.
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We are delighted to have been selected to be a part of the Chagford Film Festival 25th September 2024.
Community Events- Screening with Q&A- in the works:
-Frome town centre Secret Venue in September 2024
-Rancho La Puerta, Baja
dates and venues tbc
“Katheryn Trenshaw’s In Your Own Skin Project confirms my faith in deep essential human beauty and the innate benevolence in us all. It is an inspiring visual anthem to humanity.”
Many years ago during a silent retreat I had an epiphany. I realized that the greatest treasure I hold is buried deep inside - the thing I least want anyone to know about. This ultimately birthed the In Your Own Skin Project.
Social worker Brené Brown, along with neurobiologists and other researchers, discovered that if you want to look at happiness you need to look at shame. To help free myself and others from our shame, so we can live more authentic, resilient lives, I went out into the world, armed with body paints and video and still cameras, to record people discussing their hidden truths. I then painted that word onto their skin and photographed their portraits.
While creating the project, I met with over 200 people from more than 30 countries and all walks of life. Each of these powerful moments releases a generous contribution to the world, a buoyant reminder of living fully and the beauty and strength that comes from facing and embracing our vulnerability. This in turn grows our intimacy and presence.
Each photograph and recorded exchange documents a personal story that resonates across cultures. We find what we have in common, what makes us human.
As an artist and an art therapist, I have specialised all of my professional life in the masks we wear and the taboos that no-one wants to speak about - what American writer Robert Bly calls “our shadow bags”. These more hidden aspects of ourselves hold great treasures and vitality when they are freed. We are a living paradox and the sooner we learn to dance with this, the sooner we can live more fully alive.
The project is made up of hundreds of individual images but they are all part of one giant human poem - all unique, but all part of the same poem forest. In the 1950s, it was discovered that a variety of Aspen tree, the Pando, while it looks like tens of thousands of trunks and crowns, is actually one living organism - they all have the exactly the same DNA. So while we see them as many, they are actually one. Just like us.
We are living in unprecedented times of political, economic, ecological, social and emotional transition. In Your Own Skin portraits and stories reveal a living transformative story in a world searching for hope, wisdom and resilience - what keeps us connected and whole from the inside out.
Hanging Larger than life banners available to hire as part of the In Your Own Skin project
A few more inspirations on In Your Own Skin:
Interview Katheryn Trenshaw & Ali Donkin, Dartington’s Film Programmer
Schedule a screening party to celebrate unity in diversity and the wonder of being human.