What if we were
to change the context of recognizable signs so that they no longer
have their syntactical anchor. The work presented in this exhibition
is intended to allow viewers to reflect upon and reassess their
own ideas about the culturally constructed body. A layered and psychologically
complex work, it is imbedded with familiar imagery and objects that
are juxtaposed to allow for infinite re-combinations, displacing
the logic of our present mode of mental and visual consciousness.
The unstable combinations subvert our expectations in order to create
provocative and mysterious new signifiers that are meant to challenge
the viewers, to confront their own beliefs and to create a new narrative
not bounded by prescribed codes of behaviour and stereotypical constructs
in order to emphasize the different levels at which meaning is generated.
ARTIST'S
STATEMENT
Whether
you choose as your authority, Descartes or Koestler, the trap of
Enlightenment's dualistic celebration of the ascendancy of the rational
over nature and the separation of mind and body, remains. So strongly
entrenched and insistent is this particular influence in our social
and cultural traditions that it permeates all disciplines. The very
foundation of modernity is built upon the myth that the spirit presides
over nature, the mind over the body. It is the Ghost that animates
the Machine.
In the legacy
of the mind/body split, Descartes' separation of the soul from nature,
consciousness is accorded a position over and above the biological
and consequently, the body, lifted from its dark, irrational, unclassifiable
and unpredictable nature, is tidily reduced to a mechanical apparatus
in a regulated, utilitarian system, a site for scientific interest,
contained within specified boundaries. Freud, fearful of the body's
murky 'uncanniness' was quite insistent in his theory of somatic
compliance in which the body conforms to psychical demands, a fashionable
study in scientific circles of the time.
The body, according
to Foucault is the product of modern technologies and institutions,
whose inscriptions impose upon it a culturally constructed identity
that imprisons us in models of subjectivity and upholds stable categories
in the discourse of power. They regulate and restrict the body's
visibility, organization and functionality, a controllable unit
with a rigid structure. The body disappears in the highly regulated,
artificial, disciplined and mechanized functioning of the utopian
machine. However we continue to dredge the hidden wounds and lacerations
of the dystopian body. In spite of the ravages we persist in accepting
the baggage of unbending gendered demands, the 'body of unbearable
weight' according to Susan Bordo. Women have traditionally carried
the burden of the body as object, nature-bound, to be exploited
in the mind/body disconnect. Identified with demonic nature that
will escape regulation, they generate the anxiety of loss of control
and thus engender a 'desire mixed with dread' (Hal Foster) that
can in turn manifest in unprecedented violence.
However we find
that the body is resistant. It will not act according to the rules.
Julia Kristeva, in the Powers of Horror, recognized that we are
faced with 'the forgotten body, one continually disturbing the established
systems of identity and order. One that does not respect boundaries,
positions, rules: the in-between, the ambiguous, the composite.'
Through its diversity, multiplicity and indeterminacy it allows
for complex adaptive strategies to emerge, mocking the traditional
perceptions of science and technology. The Ghost that is haunting
the Machine may be the body itself that by its uncontrolled and
unpredictable, biological nature will escape any kind of regulation
and containment.
The work presented
in this exhibition, on view at the Red Head Gallery in Toronto in
April 2004, is intended to allow viewers to reflect upon and reassess
their own ideas about the culturally constructed body. A layered
and psychologically complex work, it is imbedded with imagery and
objects that are juxtaposed to allow for infinite re-combinations,
displacing the logic of our present mode of mental and visual consciousness.
This, in order to create provocative and mysterious new signifiers
that are meant to challenge the viewers, to confront their own beliefs
and to create a new narrative not bounded by prescribed codes of
behaviour and stereotypical constructs of the dominant historical
discourse.
Texts
cited:
Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight
Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror |