Until I stop trying to get out of my skin

Diploma project finalizing the master degree in photography at ECAL. Robin Bervini is the offspring of a bi-racial union. Being mixed race in Southern Switzerland, he always struggled in being perceived and accepted as Swiss. Because of this, growing up he has been negating his ethnicity to himself. He evaded his skin by embodying white avatars in video games, the only way he could live his white fantasy. Using that same strategy, this project takes the viewers into the artist’s skin trough a virtual reality experience and a spatial installation. After digitizing his entire body, the artist created alter-egos representing his ideal selves in different stages of life, while their identity is a manifestation of the artist’s own internalized racism, shame, social anxiety and lived discriminations.

The realization of this project involved the use of 3D scanning and photogrammetry techniques to digitize the artist’s body, and a series of processes to enable motion capture of facial performance and optimize the models as game-ready assets in order to create the virutal reality experience.

© 2020 ECAL / Robin Bervini
Installation and VR Experience (5’20”)
Project supervised by Simone Niquille and François Zajega.