In Ivana Muller 's Under My Skin, a group (maximum 20) is invited to ‘step inside’ Muller's own body to participate in an intimate guided tour through its interior. Ivana's ‘body’ consists of a maze of wood-framed, variously sized rooms, separated by red curtains. Each room contains diff erent body processes, accomplished by the body's inhabitants. Tour guides explain the phenomena encountered by the spectators. For instance, the guides point out how body tissue can be repaired (by seamstresses, in the Mending Room) and how accelerated heart beats, which are produced by amplifying the sound of a fly swatt er, are pre-recorded in the Sound Studio. In this bodily maze, the guides try to orientate the spectator by means of a map of the diff erent rooms, and how they are connected. The body is a maze, and also a theatre, most specifically backstage. Entering this theatrical body, the audience literally is off ered a look behind its curtains.

Under My Skin can be regarded as the second part of a performance diptych in which Ivana Muller explores her imagining of the relationship between body and mind. In the first part of the diptych, How Heavy Are My Thoughts, Muller asked: ‘If my thoughts are heavier than usual, is my head heavier than usual too?’ She then proceeded to subject this essentially metaphorical question to a series of empirical experiments, presented on stage in the form of a scientific lecture. Engaging in Under My Skin with themes similar to those in How Heavy Are My Thoughts — such as the comparison of scientific and artistic research, the identity and presence of the performer, and the reflection on ‘non-theatrical’ modes of representation — Müller continues to explore the relationship between body and mind, but now with a focus on the body. In the performance announcement, she provides an explanation for her fascination with her body interior: ‘[T]he most physical part of me is the most difficult to imagine, and once I do it becomes an invented fictional place.