Teresa Margolle’s work addresses mortality, the morbid and femininity as she conveys atrocities. Amy Carroll attends to Teresa Margolles’ installations, self-other portraiture, assertions of her contemporaries and her alliance with SEMEFO. She is credited with bequeathing the associations efforts with political consequence. Carroll reports on Margolle’s use of disinfected water, burial of a dead infant, oiling of a drug dealers body with human fat, her being photographed among corpses and where she came to deviate from SEMEFO. The reading understands Margolles as having presented a relationship between the corpse and her body that synonymizes aesthetics to ethics. The article references Antigone amidst contentions such as Margolle’s compositions neutralize boundaries between public and private as well as speaks to the corporeal medium’s double duty of minimal and baroque. For the author, the works are reactions to social spectacles in which Margolles’s presence further clarifies in terms of gendering and bare life minimalism. According to Carroll, Margolle’s oeuvre adamantly opposes in/difference to ‘Other’ transgressions and advocates historical retrospection. I selected the citation, “P.S. 1 renounces all responsibility for any physical, mental, or emotional damages caused to the undersigned once he/she enters the installation.” The disclaimer partnered with the exhibition denotes controversial subject matter, credence, sensorial assailment and an symbolic assessment within an intelligible perception. I encourage artistic license and sociological analysis yet Carroll posed just questions that I mulled over as I perused the content. The queries recalls Anna Dezeuze talk of taking street sleeper images. What does it mean to utilize bodies beyond the artist’s own with or without the consent of the bodies’ owners? Carroll’s choice of words are fitting. Used and objectified is what they are. I feel that the images further victimize the body owners because as we behold them we don’t see or feel for them as much as we grimace, gawk and are sickened by their grotesque state. They represent more than being deceased but with that they forfeit austerity. The cadavers loose their personage. The human body deserves dignity in life and in death. The repatriation of Native American remains comes to mind. I take no issue with people donating their limbs for science or volunteering for medical trials. Choice and consent are key. All dealings can be fulfilled with respect.
And you brought up a GREAT point, something we really need to talk about!
What are the ethical concerns here? What does it mean to use someone else's body in a work of art, without their consent? Is this presumptuous on the part of the artists? Let's talk through these ethical concerns in class tomorrow.
Teresa Margolle’s work addresses mortality, the morbid and femininity as she conveys atrocities. Amy Carroll attends to Teresa Margolles’ installations, self-other portraiture, assertions of her contemporaries and her alliance with SEMEFO. She is credited with bequeathing the associations efforts with political consequence. Carroll reports on Margolle’s use of disinfected water, burial of a dead infant, oiling of a drug dealers body with human fat, her being photographed among corpses and where she came to deviate from SEMEFO. The reading understands Margolles as having presented a relationship between the corpse and her body that synonymizes aesthetics to ethics. The article references Antigone amidst contentions such as Margolle’s compositions neutralize boundaries between public and private as well as speaks to the corporeal medium’s double duty of minimal and baroque. For the author, the works are reactions to social spectacles in which Margolles’s presence further clarifies in terms of gendering and bare life minimalism. According to Carroll, Margolle’s oeuvre adamantly opposes in/difference to ‘Other’ transgressions and advocates historical retrospection.
ReplyDeleteI selected the citation, “P.S. 1 renounces all responsibility for any
physical, mental, or emotional damages caused to the undersigned once he/she enters the
installation.” The disclaimer partnered with the exhibition denotes controversial subject matter, credence, sensorial assailment and an symbolic assessment within an intelligible perception.
I encourage artistic license and sociological analysis yet Carroll posed just questions that I mulled over as I perused the content. The queries recalls Anna Dezeuze talk of taking street sleeper images. What does it mean to utilize bodies beyond the artist’s own with or without the consent of the bodies’ owners? Carroll’s choice of words are fitting. Used and objectified is what they are. I feel that the images further victimize the body owners because as we behold them we don’t see or feel for them as much as we grimace, gawk and are sickened by their grotesque state. They represent more than being deceased but with that they forfeit austerity. The cadavers loose their personage. The human body deserves dignity in life and in death. The repatriation of Native American remains comes to mind. I take no issue with people donating their limbs for science or volunteering for medical trials. Choice and consent are key. All dealings can be fulfilled with respect.
Thank you for posting on this, oh brave soul.
ReplyDeleteAnd you brought up a GREAT point, something we really need to talk about!
What are the ethical concerns here?
What does it mean to use someone else's body in a work of art, without their consent?
Is this presumptuous on the part of the artists?
Let's talk through these ethical concerns in class tomorrow.