A collaboration with Isobel Parker Philip for Matt Huynh's Monstereum project – 'The world’s most up to date illustrated iPad compendium of current monsters'.

The skinner is an ugly brute who wears his guts on his sleeve. His existence has been documented over the last ten years, with no records suggesting he pre-dated the 21st Century. The stories and rumors that surround him have been mythologized. Indeed, in recent years he has become a mascot – an anti-hero and perverse mirror image of 21st Century society. He is a warped and degenerate everyman, but an everyman nonetheless. For in the era of the digitized identity, where we construct and fictionalize our personas across many different platforms – be they social media sites, blogs or public video broadcasts – what are we, each and every one of us, but deconstructed and fragmented selves?

In the digital realm we are encouraged to expose an image of ourselves that is both intimate and personal. And yet, these seemingly ‘intimate’ representations of the self are paradoxical. They do nothing but abstract away from, and indeed destroy, any notion of the complete and total ‘self’. We are exposed – we lay our personal anatomy, our dirty laundry, bare for the world to see – but what are we left with? We are left with the skinner. A mutilated and butchered form – unrecognizable to even himself.

A collaboration with Isobel Parker Philip for Matt Huynh's Monstereum project – 'The world’s most up to date illustrated iPad compendium of current monsters'.

The skinner is an ugly brute who wears his guts on his sleeve. His existence has been documented over the last ten years, with no records suggesting he pre-dated the 21st Century. The stories and rumors that surround him have been mythologized. Indeed, in recent years he has become a mascot – an anti-hero and perverse mirror image of 21st Century society. He is a warped and degenerate everyman, but an everyman nonetheless. For in the era of the digitized identity, where we construct and fictionalize our personas across many different platforms – be they social media sites, blogs or public video broadcasts – what are we, each and every one of us, but deconstructed and fragmented selves?

In the digital realm we are encouraged to expose an image of ourselves that is both intimate and personal. And yet, these seemingly ‘intimate’ representations of the self are paradoxical. They do nothing but abstract away from, and indeed destroy, any notion of the complete and total ‘self’. We are exposed – we lay our personal anatomy, our dirty laundry, bare for the world to see – but what are we left with? We are left with the skinner. A mutilated and butchered form – unrecognizable to even himself.

A collaboration with Isobel Parker Philip for Matt Huynh's Monstereum project – 'The world’s most up to date illustrated iPad compendium of current monsters'.

The skinner is an ugly brute who wears his guts on his sleeve. His existence has been documented over the last ten years, with no records suggesting he pre-dated the 21st Century. The stories and rumors that surround him have been mythologized. Indeed, in recent years he has become a mascot – an anti-hero and perverse mirror image of 21st Century society. He is a warped and degenerate everyman, but an everyman nonetheless. For in the era of the digitized identity, where we construct and fictionalize our personas across many different platforms – be they social media sites, blogs or public video broadcasts – what are we, each and every one of us, but deconstructed and fragmented selves?

In the digital realm we are encouraged to expose an image of ourselves that is both intimate and personal. And yet, these seemingly ‘intimate’ representations of the self are paradoxical. They do nothing but abstract away from, and indeed destroy, any notion of the complete and total ‘self’. We are exposed – we lay our personal anatomy, our dirty laundry, bare for the world to see – but what are we left with? We are left with the skinner. A mutilated and butchered form – unrecognizable to even himself.