Hayaty Diaries presents secondskin — an exhibition about touch, memory, and the stories we carry

Skin is the first archive. It announces us, meets the world, and—if we’re lucky—keeps the warmth of other people. With secondskin, the nomadic gallery and art collective Hayaty Diaries turns that idea into an intimate exhibition about encounters that settle on us and stay: a stranger’s voice, a family gesture, a room’s atmosphere that refuses to fade. Over ten days in London, six artists move between documentation and invention, portrait and apparition, to ask how connection—brief or enduring—becomes part of the body’s history.

If you’re new to Hayaty Diaries: the collective was founded to platform women artists from the region through roving shows that feel more like conversations than white-cube appointments.

In secondskin, the body is not just flesh; it’s atmosphere and dream. Works draw on family archives, invented figures, and spontaneous portraits that hover between worlds. Some passages remain deliberately raw, others resolve into meticulous construction—a rhythm that mirrors how memory behaves: edges sharp one minute, tender the next. As you move through the space, the exhibition unfolds less like a sequence and more like a field. Selves meet selves; traces stack; the presence of another becomes a new layer of your own.

Hayaty Diaries keeps its language soft and human—always closer to a whisper than a shout. That tone suits secondskin. Nothing is over-explained; instead, the show invites you to pay attention to small weather: the echo of a hand, the temperature of a color, the second when a face becomes a feeling. It’s an exhibition to experience with time, not a checklist to rush.

Why this matters now

In a year when speed often flattens nuance, secondskin argues for the politics of tenderness. It reminds us that bodies are meeting places—of histories, of migrations, of mundane miracles—and that art can register those meetings with care. Hayaty Diaries’ nomadic model keeps the conversation porous: audiences bring their own geographies, the work answers, and a new skin forms in between.

Featured artists include Amina Yahia, Fa Razavi, Tiyana Mitchell, Leily Moghtader Mojdehi, Elias Loudiyi and Yasmina Hilal.

Where & when

• Title: secondskin
• Dates: October 16–26
• Address: 10 Greatorex Street, London E1 5NF
• Presented by: Hayaty Diaries (nomadic gallery & art collective)

For context on the collective and its past shows, revisit our profile of Hayaty Diaries , click here

Photography by Jacob Sirkin