Emo/exo-bodies in analogue and digital spaces: towards a somatic literacy of digital flesh By Petja Ivanova and Stefanie Mallon

Abstract

In her artistic practice, Petja Ivanova explores sensual and intimate casts of the human body, working at the intersection of material alchemy and digital speculation. Her ‘emo/exo-bodies’, textile sculptures made from bandages soaked in fermented chitosan, are both externalized emotional skins (exo) and embodied emotional states (emo). These porous exoskeletons function as somatic archives, holding the imprint of affective experience. Instrumentalizing the chitosan’s healing of the skin surface, Ivanova turns toward internal, emotional wounds, which are often neglected, feminized, or privatized, and treats them through what she frames as poetic futures and speculative ecologies on the spectrum of data healing. In this interview with cultural anthropologist Stefanie Mallon, Ivanova reflects on the transfer of her emo/exo-bodies into digital space, the affective implications of this transition, and her search for a ‘somatic literacy’ attuned to the scars we are still in the process of making. Through 3D scanning, the textile forms are digitized, gaining a new kind of presence, which Ivanova calls ‘digital flesh’. In this process, the material reopens and becomes manipulable: stretched, reshaped, and written on. The wound is not closed but kept wide open, visible, evolving, and re-coded. This interview situates Ivanova’s practice within broader discussions of textile-based image practices in the digital age, and considers how her artistic work can act as a method of emotional processing, knowledge production, and structural critique.