An Educational Artistic Exhibition on the Skin: "PEAUrigami^® or SKINorigami"

No other organ in the human body has as many functions as the skin: biologic, cultural, social, and psychologic functions. The skin is a cutaneous paper, more precisely "the paper of self," which covers our body. Origami is the art of paper folding. SKIN and ORIGAMI, beyond the wordplay around paper, are similar in several respects: the polygonal network, the basic folds, and pleat folding; hence, the idea of producing artwork connecting the cutaneous physiology with the art of origami pays an artistic tribute to the skin. Our artistic and cultural endeavor has an educational purpose to communicate knowledge of the physiology of the skin to different audiences: (1) to an audience of initiates, dermatologists, and scientists who will be able to recognize the basic facts of skin physiology reinterpreted by origami and (2) to the general public who discover the unsuspected complexity of the skin. We first took photographs of different skins, with different magnifications, which were developed on different-sized squares of paper in order to make folded structures. With skin physiology being reinterpreted through origami in this way, we logically called this educational artistic exhibition "PEAUrigami," associating the French word peau (skin) and "origami."