Amada from the series Skin Deep © Paola Paredes
Skin Deep
Exhibition Runs until the end of May 2023 at the Heroines Quarter, Gloucester
An interactive photographic experience. Skin Deep presents fifteen stories, representing the diverse sexualities and gender identities of the queer community in Ecuador.
Despite the LGBTIQ+ community having won important rights in recent years, this group continues to be subject to discrimination and violence. This project symbolically reconstructs these personal stories through “interactive portraiture”. This project aims to tear aside perceived stereotypes, and show a community that is ethnically, economically, generationally and emotionally diverse. It rejects the limited definition of gender or sexuality as static or innate. It recognizes both as something fluid, built by each individual throughout their lifetime as they understand and consolidate their own identity.
Merging tactile interaction with digital platforms/technology, the images presented break with traditional dynamics of museography and visual arts. The viewer becomes a participant who, through the act of touching and tearing the image, reveals the depth of each narrative.
The interactive nature of the work invites the viewer to consider the subject beneath the surface of appearances, creating an empathetic and immersive approach to the humanity of these everyday stories.
“Skin Deep transgresses and questions how we interact with art; its innovative narrative creates a unique, playful and individual experience”
About Paola
Paola Paredes is an Ecuadorian photographer whose work is centred around the experiences of LGBTIQ people, and how they navigate attitudes towards homosexuality in her home country. Through both staged imagery and documentary photography, Paola illustrates personal and complex interactions between sexuality, culture and religion.
