Vermillion Border
This work is some of my thinking about bodies as vessels. We all contain openings in our bodies that are our connection to the air and water and the big wide world. Our skin sweats, our lips gasp and our intestines push out waste. Heat and fluid rush in and out, and something we typically think of as so solid, is just a cluster of intangible empty spaces and holes.
In 2019, I had a baby, and when they made a new hole in my body to get her out, I literally had my uterus pulled temporarily outside my body, and then became full of trapped air in strange chimneys inside me I hadn’t realized were there. During my pregnancy, it seemed all anybody cared about was all of my openings and empty areas – negative spaces I had not considered before. I started feeling like a big bottle with a very special ship inside. Just a collection of holes and pockets.
The vermillion border is the name for the colour change in tissue where our skin changes from the pigmentation and sensitive tissue of the lips to the rest of the face.
These openings are our most tender, most vulnerable places. I like to think about them, and I wonder about all the secret dead ends and voids that we all contain. So I have been making vessels that contain hidden spaces and air. I like to make them translucent, because although you cannot see inside a person, we have just as many holes, and are just as delicate. All of them have mouths, that I give focus to and make the nerve endings stitch by stitch. I am working through trying to capture the curious lightness I feel as I consider all of the air and steam and open space inside me, and every other person that has a body.
Hilary Mussell 