BUCK SKIN NAKED
The body as land. The skin as story.

Growing up, I heard stories from my mom, a Residential School Survivor, about how control showed up in the smallest details. Kids were taught that their bodies were not their own. Shame became a tool, and church based ideas about modesty and sin pushed nudity and sexuality into taboo. Those messages did not stay in the past. They seeped into community life until we started watching each other instead or protecting each other. And when someone shows their skin with pride today, they can be met with judgement and cruelty, like their body is a problem to be corrected. Buck Skin Naked is my refusal of that inheritance. It is a return to the body as sacred, and a reminder that sovereignty includes the right to be seen on our own terms.

This series is also about language, and what it does to us. Words can carry histories. Even a common phrase like buck naked can pull up old colonial ideas about whose bodies are "civilized," whose bodies are "acceptable," and whose bodies are treated like something to control. In these portraits, being uncovered is not proof of inferiority. It is self recognition. It is humour. It is power. The body is sacred, and the body is reclaimed.‍ ‍

-Bangishimo