Skin Deep: Female Flesh in UK Live Art since 1999

The decades at the turn of the third millennium in the UK have been a time of various scandals, controversies and court cases that have drawn attention to the ethical and legal status of the human body in various contexts. As the body has become increasingly exploited, manipulated, commodified and commercialised by biotechnologies, so unease has escalated about control over and proprietary interests in all bodies, both human and non-human. It is here that I propose that particular female live artists, working in the UK during this period, have sought to articulate challenges and questions against these contexts and inserted female identity, bodies and skin into the debates. This essay interrogates the work of Marisa Carnesky and Kira O'Reilly. The practices of both artists have offered divergent ways of contemplating what is at stake in some of these biopolitical arenas; in particular, they make the female visible in relation to the ethical, social and legal status of the human body.