Catherine Opie: The self portraits were in some ways what ended up launching launching me into the larger art world. I made “Self-Portrait/Cutting” on my back and it’s two stick figure girls with skirts, sort of what a kindergartener would draw of their family– a little house with a smokestack.
And then because we’re dealing with issues in 1993, still in the AIDS epidemic actually, the kind of polarizing politics of the time and realizing that this image spoke in many different ways. And then to literally have it cut in your skin so that the blood begins to be part of the discourse, was a way for me to begin to really deal with larger issues of homophobia and what it is to be in our bodies and to be identified as queer beings.
[The person who drew this on my back was] a really amazing artist here in Los Angeles by the name of Judie Bamber and she was part of the larger leather community that I was a part of. I had her practice on chicken breasts in the kitchen before she did it. And every time she would make a mark, her hand would shake. My friends kept having to calm her down and tell her that is was OK and that it was consensual and I was asking her to help me make this piece.