Event Blog 3

For my third event, I chose to attend Making Strange: Gagawaka + Postmortem by Vivan Sundaram, a Delhi based contemporary artist. This exhibition at the Fowler Museum on UCLA's campus combined two of Sundaram's pieces together, first Gagawaka: which was over 25 sculptures of garments made from recycled materials and other weird items placed onto manikins. Postmortem was a little bit scarier, as the name suggests, and consisted of manikins, wooden props, and educational medically-accurate anatomical models that were chopped up and combined in different and interesting ways, but more on that soon.

The manikins in Gagawaka had dresses made out of all sorts of things, from surgeon caps to red bras, and some of them actually looked spectacular before you realized what strange things they were made of. I think this was part of the point, and arranging things you normally would not think of as wearable items are selected and re-purposed into things that are beautiful and worthy of being worn. It really made me consider the effects of presentation, as you can see in the picture below:

Me standing next to my favorite piece from Gagawake

The manikin I am standing next to has a dress made out of recycled film material, which by itself would not look that interesting and would look like a random object. However, presentation plays a huge role, since they are arranged in such a way that emulates a beautiful dress, it becomes a pretty impressive dress. It calls into question what we normally see as beautiful and what isn't, and how much of that can be attributed to the way in which we are viewing it: like through what media or how it is arranged and compiled.

A lot of medical equipment in this particular arrangement 

I felt similarly about pieces from Postmortem, as other objects that would normally not be sort of frightening or disgusting became strange to look at due to it's presentation. For some pieces, I just did not want to study them because they were just almost gross to look at, and other pieces I couldn't help but watch and study even though I felt almost as if I shouldn't be. But really, it was just a combination of otherwise benign objects. 

It was interesting to see medical equipment being used in such a way. As discussed in lecture during the week of MedTech and Art, in the Renaissance period a lot of anatomical models and equipment were created by artists, and artists and biologists essentially worked together in order to create educational and anatomically accurate pictures and models. This piece really made me realize how much society believes the fields of art and science are separate, as even though the anatomical models were created by artists working with scientists, it felt weird to see them in an artistic setting and being used in a non-educational manner, even though they weren't created by just scientists without artists, because we normally often only see them in a biology classroom. 

The fact that medical equipment was being used also added a sense of realism to the art. Since the equipment is anatomically accurate, the proportions are all real and what is inside all looks very much real, which adds a level of perspective and depth to the piece, as you can't just brush it off as being fake even when it kind of grossed me out to see the insides of bodies arranged in such ways, which I very much believe was the point. Many pieces made me think about what was going on beneath my own skin in my own body, just as the MRI artwork I blogged about for MedTech and art did earlier in the quarter.

I would very much recommend this exhibit to everyone in this class, as the use of medical equipment in art made this a very relevant event to attend. While some parts I would not say I necessarily enjoyed, it was an extremely powerful event to attend, just make sure that you don't plan lunch directly before or after this one if you are easily grossed out like I am!