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An image of a woman on the left and a handwritten paragraph on the right. The woman looks at the camera with her back against a wall. She is wearing a cropped top and lace underwear. There are tattoos visible on her arms and her legs are covered from her feet to her hips in writing. The writing on her legs is illegible to the viewer. It is written facing towards her. The paragraph on the left reads "BLACK INK ON MY SKIN: Black in on my skin makes me feel better. It reminds the that my body is mine and not what has happened to it. It reminds me of the impermanence of permanency. It is only through acknowledgement and time and layers of my skin that I can begin to let anything fade away. And it is through the time and the ink and the impermanent and the permanent that my skin becomes my own. The urge to unzip and detach just to stop the feeling of crawling - I can scrub, lose layers of who I used to be, or I can choose to hide, leaving behind a stain of darkness and tears. Or I can write it, and look at it, and love it and despise it all at once. What is here will never truly stay and what is gone will never truly leave. What has happened, how I will choose to heal, it will all one day nothing but fire and ash. And in that there is power. In that there is choice and autonomy even where choice and autonomy have been stripped away. And for now I have my black ink. I have my skin. And when I am left with nothing else I will still have me."

Black Ink on My Skin

Anna Boden

Digital photographs and pen on paper

"Black Ink on My Skin" documents and reflects on the process of journaling on my body about my sexual assault. This choice of temporarily altering my body with the black ink of a marker emphasizes both the parallels and the contradictions of my choice to permanently alter my body with the black ink of my tattoos. The choice to undergo these alterations allow me to reclaim my body as my own.