EDEN'S CAVE   

I have had eczema all my life. It disappeared for a while during my teenage years, but as a child and since my last year of university back in 2011, it has been a wild and tumultuous journey of fire. It has taken me a long time to understand how to live with it, and more still to meet it head-on and ultimately, to heal. I have risen to this often-daunting task many times, employing different approaches - changing my diet, buying exotic supplements from other countries, juicing religiously, using natural oils, seeking spiritual guidance, and dancing ferociously. However, the roots run deep, perhaps too deep for me to penetrate in this lifetime, because in the end, these fingers take to the skin like furious birds, talons opening flesh as if they have been starved for a century.

 

I had already explored many avenues of healing before that moment in May 2018 when, deciding to completely abandon steroids, I descended into hell. If no one has ever told you what it is like to forsake conventional medicine that has suppressed the truth of what lies beneath, allow me to share it with you now. First, there is a slight reddening, followed by increased itching, then the emergence of sores and bursting ulcers, and eventually, fevers. The body shakes like a rabid dog and continuously sheds its skin, not in one gracious, snake-like transformation, but incessantly, with thousands of flakes forming heaped masses on the floor. The sensation, the need to scratch, the compulsion to pierce those places and draw blood is so unbearably intense that it becomes a constant wailing voice that drives you to the brink of madness - a siren’s call that steals all sanity. During that month of May, I came off steroids and became a fire-drake, all burn. It was an excruciating time. It was then that I resolved to hold onto something and to write. I penned 35 poems called ‘The Red Poems,’ which are my prayers and confessions from the depths of that underworld. I also decided that I must create an artistic work centered around my skin and eczema, one that would not be just for me but for all who suffer alone, invisibly, silently, and unseen.

 

My interest in all those who suffer in the way I have, and my commitment to making the broader public acknowledge the debilitating effects of eczema, have given birth to this project. For behind closed doors, away from the mayhem of civilisation, away from the raving music and chaotic thrum of everyday life, in a bathroom or a bedroom, private battles are fought. Here lies a deep desire to unleash chaos - a place where two voices shout, one driven by the impulse for violence, the other pleading for peace.

 

Yet, this is about more than just eczema. Small, seemingly insignificant yet deadly wars are taking place everywhere - the war of identity, the war of perfection, and the war with the truth beneath the skin. It is a battle against the mirror and the desire to be perfect because society tells us to be flawless, to be divine. We yearn to be kings and queens in this world, to rise to the top and beyond. And if anything blocks our ascent, any discrepancy or glitch in the system, we repress, suppress, and manage. This suppression lies at the core of Western civilisation’s so-called treatment of eczema. Instead of taking the time to deeply understand the condition, its origins, and gradually transform ourselves over time, we suppress it with creams and ointments.

 

What would it be like to meet the truth, to shed our constructs of identity and perfection, to betray what we know through revolt, and descend, sometimes quietly, other times violently, to explore what resides beneath the skin, to see the strange golden eyes are staring right back at us?

 

This battle is at the heart of ‘SKIIN’. This project revolves around eczema, but travels far beyond it. 

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I look forward to meeting with you on the journey.