Dirty.Body.Sacred

The connection between abstract theory and empirical data is one indispensable link of knowledge production, which is also its obscure spot. How does an anthropologist ascend from sensual observations to abstract notions, and what is the mental legitimation of these reductions of senses into meaning? Being one of the most interdisciplinary spheres of knowledge, anthropology borrows models and methods from various disciplines from biology to analytic philosophy. Usually, these models are not transposed at their face value but rather as images and metaphors. This exhibition reflects on how an artistic approach spins the chaos of field experience into conceptual threads to be woven into a fabric of knowledge.

The primary objects of this project are the photographs, drawings, and videos produced as part of anthropological research in a shelter for dying destitute people in Kolkata (Calcutta). The destitute population of this gargantuan “human dump” attracts hundreds of humanitarian and religious volunteers from around the world every year.

The project is a semantic melting pot where the original pieces are juxtaposed with quotes, images and conceptual fragments, which open them up for interpretation through contextualization. The marginalized, dirty and sacred body of the moribund “poorest of the poor”, subjected to the pastoral care of charity, is the central complex signifier of this artistic dissection.

The exposition demonstrates art used as a heuristic device, capable of bringing together various phenomena and concepts through metaphoric connections. It uses art as a fertile field of ludus, where the limits of disciplines, semantic systems and sensual realms are transgressed and re-established. Art is invoked as a liminal semantic field, which opens the pure cognitive structures into the impure fluidity of transformation.

Ludus (lat.): game, play, school, lovemaking.

Video from the exhibition