The Mystery of the Body

When the naked body becomes an advertising tactic, dying becomes a media event and corpses become exhibits for public display, what does this say about our image of the body and physical experience and about our relationship to eroticism and death? This exhibition at the Moritzburg in Halle/Saale was the first to feature a large collection of works by the Flemish sculptor Berlinde de Bruyckere which predominantly focus on forms of physical and psychological violence, social and sexual degradation, and media voyeurism. De Bruyckere presented her sculpted deformations of the human body in a thematic context with depictions of sensual and maltreated bodies portrayed in paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder and films by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The mystery of the body, the love in the suffering Man of Sorrows and the close proximity between eroticism and death were the coupled leitmotifs of the exhibition. The publicly and privately-owned works were selected for the exhibition by the artist herself in cooperation with experts of Cranach and Pasolini. The colloquium Between the Cyborg and the Man of Sorrow addressed ethical issues related to the human image and its portrayal in art, while young people were invited to participate in a workshop where they could examine their own Body Experiences in comparison to models propagated by the media.

Curator: Cornelia Wieg
Artists: Berlinde de Bruyckere (B), Pier Paolo Pasolini (IT), Lucas Cranach

Venues and schedule: Moritzburg Foundation, Halle an der Saale, 3 Apr. – 3 Jul. 2011