Friction Layers
Aiman Hassani

This work maps the friction between my skin and the fractured surfaces of Buenos Aires. From the worn tiles of Constitución to the cracked pavements near Once, I collect the city’s damage: an involuntary writing engraved on its skin. I link these urban textures with microscopic images of my own skin, tracing a shared vocabulary of pressure, memory, and resistance. The grid becomes a site of tension, not order: lines bend, hesitate, scar. They signal not decoration, but resistance.

Overlaying print, glass, video, and gesture, the work asks: what does skin remember that concrete forgets? What remains after contact, weight, or disappearance?

In the video component, I traverse my own skin through the rhythm of Argentine tango and the ambient noise of the city. The camera moves in rhythmic jerks, from one fragment of skin to another, guided by sound rather than spectacle. Here, the skin is not a dancer, but a landscape: filmed microscopically, fragment by fragment, it becomes a sensitive terrain. The rhythm does not arise from the bodily performance, but from the moving gaze: through, around, and in between. The tango and urban sounds do not accompany a dance; they structure a way of looking, of feeling, of returning. Each medium carries its own friction: between body and structure, surface and imprint, imposed rhythm and embodied temporality.

Technique: Analog photography, monotype on digitally printed analogical photographies, single-channel video, camera-based performance
Materials: Canson Infinity Etching Rug 310g