Text: The project Skin & Bones explores the activity of space-making as a continuous negotiation between bodies, objects and spatial structures. Laid on the ground, a flat, apparently two-dimensional square of Canvas* – the ‘skin’ – waits to be activated by the ‘bones’: an assortment of shaped tools employed by human bodies. Only together they can generate an endless variety of sculptural forms that at the same time are interior spaces. Skin & Bones was commissioned for the exhibition My Canvas by Kvadrat that invited different designers to work with a specific material called canvas. When we started experimenting with the material, I was most fascinated by its conceptual and aesthetic qualities when put into drapery. The reflection of the light turned the soft drapery into a marble like, sculptural object that at the same time was not at all solid and stable but moving softly and ever changing from movement to movement. Conceptually I was interested in the meanings of a canvas* as a platform or background in relation to the picture or event that it is staging. More specific, I explored how something is revealed by actually hiding it or the moment, when the carrier of an image and image fall into one. Spectators turned into explorers that created an inside space through socio-material interactions. Like a visual heartbeat of these experimental activities, these flowing negotiations reflects as moving, spatial traces to the viewed from the outside. * Canvas (noun)?1. A heavy, coarse, closely woven textile of cotton, hemp or flax, mostly used for tents and sails. 2. A piece of such textile on which a painting, especially an oil painting, is executed. 3. The background against which events unfold, as in a historical narrative. 4. A tent or group of tents. A circus tent. 5. Sports. The floor of a ring in which boxing or wrestling takes place. Project team: Mariejke Kruijssen, Elena Steffan, Petra Popangelova Exhibition: My Canvas at Somerset House, London. Curated by: Constance Rubini, Njusja de Gier, Jeffrey Bennett, Hans Maier-Aichen Supported by: Kvadrat textiles Pictures: Casper Sejersen Video: Rudi Schroeder (camera), Oli Weiss, Elena Steffan (editing)