London Month of the Dead

SECOND SKIN Human leather, Mortality and Self Authorship with Katie Taylor At Kensal Green Cemetery On Saturday 10th October 2026 from 3:30 pm Human leather has long been associated with punishment, violence and atrocity, from the trophies of ancient warfare to books bound in the skin of executed criminals and the horrors of the Holocaust. In this fascinating talk, artist Katie Taylor explores the extraordinary history of anthropodermic leather and the many ways human skin has been used throughout history, asking how these unsettling traditions have shaped our understanding of the material. But what happens when human leather is created with the full knowledge and consent of its donor? Katie then reveals her own remarkable project to preserve and transform her surgically removed skin into leather following major weight loss. Challenging long held assumptions about the body, consent and mortality, her work invites us to reconsider human remains not as objects of horror, but as deeply personal expressions of identity, memory and self authorship. Tickets £12.50 including a Victorian punch. Please click here to buy. Katie Taylor Katie Taylor is a PhD researcher in Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University whose practice explores death, memory and human remains through sculpture and material culture. Drawing on archaeology and forensic science, her work investigates how identity can be recovered from the traces we leave behind.

SECOND SKIN
Human leather, Mortality and Self Authorship
with Katie Taylor At Kensal Green Cemetery
On Saturday 10th October 2026 from 3:30 pm

Human leather has long been associated with punishment, violence and atrocity, from the trophies of ancient warfare to books bound in the skin of executed criminals and the horrors of the Holocaust. In this fascinating talk, artist Katie Taylor explores the extraordinary history of anthropodermic leather and the many ways human skin has been used throughout history, asking how these unsettling traditions have shaped our understanding of the material. But what happens when human leather is created with the full knowledge and consent of its donor?

Katie then reveals her own remarkable project to preserve and transform her surgically removed skin into leather following major weight loss. Challenging long held assumptions about the body, consent and mortality, her work invites us to reconsider human remains not as objects of horror, but as deeply personal expressions of identity, memory and self authorship.

Tickets £12.50 including a Victorian punch. Please click here to buy.

Katie Taylor
Katie Taylor is a PhD researcher in Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University whose practice explores death, memory and human remains through sculpture and material culture. Drawing on archaeology and forensic science, her work investigates how identity can be recovered from the traces we leave behind.