Isabel Núñez (malakagama)
Moult, the Other Skin situates transformation as a continuous state of matter, where natural cycles and material ecology become both content and concept. It proposes an expanded reading of mutation, understood as a sustained transition over time.
The piece is constructed through the relationship between two material lines linked to the process of skin shedding in the worm — moulting. On the one hand, plant roots emerge as organic extensions that evoke living skins: sensitive, flexible surfaces in constant growth and adaptation. On the other, biomaterial sheets made from the worm’s food, once dried and transformed, suggest hardened layers of skin associated with processes of protection and care.
Both materialities function as records of transformation. The roots embody what is still in process, the living and the expanding. The sheets, by contrast, condense time into a stabilised skin, the result of processes of digestion and decomposition.
This dialogue establishes a tension between what sheds and what remains, between what grows and what becomes fixed, generating a sensory experience that brings the viewer closer to the slow rhythms of nature and the invisible systems that sustain life. Through this material-organic metaphor, the project proposes a reflection on transformation and on our capacity for continuous reinvention.
Isabel Núñez Penalva (Murcia, 1992) is an interdisciplinary artist and a PhD candidate in Contemporary Art at the University of Murcia. Her practice moves between memory, body and territory. Through hybrid processes that integrate performativity, post-photography and material ecology, she develops installations that explore marginal and resilient spaces, addressing questions of materiality, temporality, and the relationships between the human and the non-human.
@malakagama