signs and symbols

Skin Hunger at 89 Greene
Jamie Diamond

June 7* - July 19, 2024

Screening and Q&A: Skin Hunger
at Anthology Film Archives
June 13, 2024
4:30-5:30pm

followed by

*Opening Reception:
June 13, 2024
6:00-8:00pm

89 Greene at signs and symbols* is delighted to present Skin Hunger, by artist Jamie Diamond. Curated by Dr. Kathy Battista, Diamond’s project consists of one large photographic wallpaper, an embroidery, and videos that record her process.

We live in a universe where virtually anything we want, we can have. Press a button and you can get yourself a job, a date, food delivered to your door, new clothes, a new home, a vacation, medical care, psychotherapy, even a pet. And yet, somehow, the most basic human need of all — touch — is mostly out of reach. Meanwhile, research is telling us that isolation and loneliness have hit emergency levels. The COVID-19 pandemic and years of increased digitization and automation have made us more isolated than ever, and people everywhere are yearning for human connection. Neuroscientists and sociologists are ringing the alarm bells, proving the absence of touch is dangerous to our health. We know that skin-to-skin connection is vital to the human experience. It starts the moment we leave the womb and are placed on our mother’s chest. But what do we do now that human connection is slipping away from us? The stakes could not be higher.
—Jamie Diamond

Skin Hunger documents the artist’s experience with professional cuddlers, known as Professional Touch Practitioners. A new form of labor for the 21st century, these cuddlers are paid an hourly fee to caress others, which is distinct from massage therapies. There are strict boundaries around consent that are negotiated before any interaction, as witnessed in Diamond’s Wheel of Consent embroidery. The life-scaled wallpaper is documentation from a cuddle session, accompanied by videos of the artists from sessions with four different cuddlers, which are shown on monitors.

Diamond’s Skin Hunger photographs are intimate and touching as they oscillate between seductive and empathetic: legs intertwine like those of lovers; one woman’s head rests on another’s chest; a caring person wraps their arm around the artist’s midriff as they lie spooning. Like much of her work, from the Reborn Doll series to Constructed Families, Diamond becomes part of the subculture that she explores. Here she engaged with the cuddlers and gained an authentic understanding of the need for this practice. The resulting project is emblematic of our increasingly distanced world since the coronavirus. Combined with an increased reliance on digital platforms, humans around the world are suffering a crisis of loneliness and isolation.

Skin Hunger is an extension of Diamond’s ongoing interest in the human desire for intimacy, both real and imagined, organic and synthetic. Much of her work explores and documents the dance between what is authentic, and what is projected or constructed. Through collaborations with strangers, mimes, professional actors, and untrained outsider artists, she uses recognizable photographic language to make objects, construct events, and forge artificial histories and relationships for the camera, exploring the inherent fictions and complex perspectives of photography, and the conflation between the documentary and constructed tableaux genres. 

On Thursday, June 13, there will be a screening of Diamond's film Skin Hunger at Anthology Film Archives at 4:30pm, followed by a q&a with the artist through 5:30pm. After this nearby event, signs and symbols will host an opening reception at the gallery from 6 to 8pm.

*Please note that all 89 Greene exhibitions are on view at the gallery’s location at 249 East Houston Street; the name of the project is only in reference to Jack Smith's historic address.

jamie diamond is a performance artist, photographer and filmmaker living and working in New York. Since 2008, Diamond has been an active professional visual artist and educator in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania, mounting national and international exhibitions. At the core of her work is the evolving nature of human connection and intimacy. Her work has been the focus of exhibitions at Fondazione Prada, Hong Kong and Milan, and presented in group shows at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; Huis Marseille, Netherlands; Museum für neue Kunst, Germany; Kunsthalle Erfurt, Germany; Trapholt Museum of Art and Design, Denmark; Museo d'Arte Contemporanea della Sicilia, Palermo, Italy; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Bronx Museum, New York, NY; amongst others. Diamond is a recipient of the Artists Grant from The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, the NYFA Fellowship Award in Photography and the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship Award. She has been an artist-in-residence at The Bronx Museum, Mana Residencies program, LMCC Swing Space residency and Work Space residency. Diamond's work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, artnet, AnOther Magazine, Whitewall, Muse Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Aperture, Hyperallergic, The Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Artsy and Phaidon, among others.