Essay by Tallulah Ainsworth for Contextualising Practice
Building a person is no easy task. There are many parts of a human being that all intersect with one another, and are incredibly delicate and prone to failure (Gray 1858). It is an undertaking that I would only recommend to the most skilled of craftspersons.
This essay will explore the body I built in my work Anatomy 2 (2024) for my exhibition Pack Mentality at Testing Grounds Emporium. Through her, and what I call the ‘fantastical-medicalism’ of my practice, I will explore how Magical Realism helped me accept my lack of understanding of my own body through art, and how when you feel disconnected from your body, or struggle to show externally something that feels so internal, the surreal can be an invaluable vehicle of communicating that trauma. Everyone, everywhere, will get very sick one day, and when you become a citizen of what Susan Sontag deems the “Kingdom of the sick”, it often feels as though no one has ever understood. Then, you must build your body again from the ground up.
Lungs (and Magical Realism)
These are one of the most important parts of a person. You’ll definitely need these in your creation. It is key that they stay completely empty, if they fill up they turn sour and begin to malfunction. Any, and all, materials must stay out of there, all slimes, goo’s- even smoke or vapour. They are the dead space of the body.
Influential Art and Literature professor Wendy Faris defines Magical Realism as a mode of art that “combines realism and the fantastic so that the marvellous seems to grow organically within the ordinary, blurring the distinction between them” (Faris 2004). I believe this offers a unique lens through which to express traumatic events that can feel surreal and difficult to articulate. This genre, characterised by its integration of fantastical elements into everyday life, rather than the “high fantasy” settings that exist entirely in a different realm, normalises the idea of the supernatural coexisting naturally with the real world (Weschler 1985). It is much more prevalent in literature – particularly Latin American literature – than in visual art. However, the term was coined by German art writer Franz Roh in his book Magischer Realismus (Roh 1925) to refer to a newforming photographic style. Whether it be in photography, painting, literature or film, Magical Realism is deeply intertwined with the depiction of trauma (Roland 2015). The genre’s ability to disrupt linear time and incorporate the surreal makes it an ideal tool for portraying extreme events. Whether shared by communities or endured individually, events that feel so incomprehensible they must be separated from the everyday world (Weschler 1985). Often it is utilised in relation to collective events, such as war, civil unrest, colonialism and political oppression (see Shahid Abdullah 2020; Sherratt-Bado 2018). However, my argument lies in its effectiveness at conveying the smaller and more personal medical trauma. By employing Magical Realism, my work can convey the depersonalised and elusive nature of traumatic memories, providing a medium that captures the emotional and psychological complexities of such events, making the intangible aspects of these experiences more accessible and resonant.
Guts (and my practice)
A person needs food to be powered, you don’t have to worry about this yet though. Just make sure you add 10 to 500 ft of guts into the lower abdomen as a way of processing the fuel. You don’t have to be delicate with these, just stuff them in wherever they fit. Tangling is fine, but make sure to unpick any knots, if there isn’t a clear path all the way through the entire body it causes problems. Don’t be afraid to add more tubing if necessary.
My work exists in pursuit of the question “what makes us who we are?”. I mean that quite literally, what are the bits of muscle, sinew, arteries, brain cells and phlegm that allow us to be alive? Visually, there is a focus on scientific or medical symbolism and motifs, but ones that hold no scientific basis. Chart readings with no labels, long swirling intestines, biocells made of stars, saccharine organs and surgical procedures done on mechanical insides – a body that exists in a reality deviating from our own in a subtly surreal way. Now before you, in Anatomy 2, stands that body.
Dear reader, as I have been instructing you in this recipe, the structure of this essay is reflective of my process too, as that is exactly how I created this work; from the inside out.
I began with the organs. The body exists in a vacuum, an endless black void of static gesso, dark and deep, completely removed of scenery. There is no head, no brain or consciousness, only a twisting cacophony of nerves travelling to the edge of the canvas, like a hundred lighting strikes heading outwards. Half blue, half red, like a diagram of veins, distinguishing pulmonary from systemic. The skin is painted distinctly over the organs in large strokes. The paint is mixed on the canvas, leaving distinct textured patterns of the white melting into the pinkish tones. All together this gives a fleshy look that one might associate with raw meat. Some areas are left uncovered, allowing the viewer to see straight through the figure to the blackness on the other side, giving the impression of the skin as a hollow outer-layer, stretched over a loose frame. The organs peer through the peeled-back layers of skin, brightly coloured and saccharine. The internal view is reminiscent of illustrated anatomical textbooks (such as Marvodi et al. 2013), but all of it is wrong and unnatural.
Bones (and the nature of illness)
Many of my colleagues in the field are advocates of “bonelessness” in creations, believing them to be too breakable and prone to wear and tear over time, encouraging structural disease. Now, take that as you will dear reader, but I am personally a believer in the importance of a scaffolding structure, despite the risk of chronic malfunction. Otherwise, your person may struggle with general basic movement and become lethargic and dependent. To human beings, this is known as laziness.
As Sontag has noted descriptive language can have a grave impact on the perception of illness (2001). Harraway’s “antagonistic dualisms” outlines a series of false dichotomies that are used to maintain structures of power such as male/female, human/animal, and civilised/primitive (Harraway 1991). I would argue this extends to the notion of the sick and healthy. For what state of the body exists in perfect harmony with no malfunction? How much disruption can occur before someone falls into the category of the sick rather than the well? What of the deterioration of the body that comes with age? Anyone could be harbouring a grave illness undetected, asymptomatic, just waiting to be revealed – Schrodinger’s sickness. It is perhaps more fitting to refer to disease, injury, and illness with the language of the machine: malfunction, disruption and repair. I find that when speaking on the subject, it becomes harder to disconnect the body from the machine. Much of my practice melds the two together, portraying the body through the lens of a machine; chart readings, x-ray scans, marks of tools and instruments. Or alternatively, more literally creating a cyborg. A term that feels futuristic and fantasy, but, as Haraway has articulated, the coupling of organic and technological is commonplace in modern medicine (Harraway 1991). The incorporation of any kind of medical device into the body permanently is inherently traumatic and rejection rates are high (Capuani et al. 2022). This danger, coupled with medical companies defuncting devices already inserted into people’s bodies in the name of higher profits (Wilson 2023), makes cyborgs a bona fide oppressed class. As such, fantasy becomes reality.
Brain (and the trauma of it all)
The brain is unimportant. The only good it does is controlling the body when it works well, but it rarely does. In the case of serious malfunction – which is far more common than one might expect – it can cause great distress and torment. This malfunction is also notoriously difficult to repair and causes long-term damage. Quite frankly, it is better if you forgo it entirely.
My practice separates the body from the person,– which is a common mental reaction to ongoing medical issues (Murphy 2023). The ‘she’ of Anatomy 2 could be me, but she isn’t, because she isn’t anybody, she is just a body. Picture this: She is in pain, she does not know why, this happens regularly. She goes to the doctor, paying a hefty bill for the privilege, she tries to explain exactly what is wrong, but she doesn’t have the language for it. The doctor looks at her with equal mixes of sympathy and scepticism. She is injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected. After a series of tests and several hours, she will be told that her results came back normal as if this is good news. It is not, but now she must leave. In her mind, her body may as well be a sentient antagonist working in opposition to her. Aristotle believed in the “purging of the emotions of pity and fear that are aroused in the viewer of a tragedy”, known as catharsis (University of Hawaii 2007). This exists for me in the externalisation and visual interpretation of a body that is largely a mystery to me. In Anatomy 2 there is no face, no head, just a wrecked mess of a nervous system spilling out of where one should be. The sense of objectification is enhanced by the figure being a female one. Not only is the depiction of women as nudes and muses rather than minds a well-entrenched artistic tradition (see Guerilla Girls 1989), but the view of one’s own body as a foreign entity is a well-known response to sexual trauma, a link that may be more pertinent in the audience’s mind with a female figure (Murphy 2023) .
Art writer and Psychologist Tobi Zausner (1998) posits that Chaos Theory indicates that during times of great personal turbulence, one’s art can pivot in an entirely different direction in an attempt to re-establish new attractions to art and life itself. For periods of sickness, he refers to this as the “physical creative illness”. Expressive arts therapy helps individuals process and articulate what is often unspeakable, enabling them to explore and restructure their trauma narratives in a safe, non-verbal manner (Malchiodi 2020). Furthermore, artmaking is also a sensory experience that can reconnect a person to their body (Malchiodi 2020) which maintains physical memories that notoriously can change through traumatic experiences (Van der Kolk 2015). With the personal rectification that trauma-informed practice can have, as well as the potential motivating power of chaos, it is easy to see the links between the illnesses of some of the most famous artists in history, and their output (see Zausner 1998). Consequently, trauma-based practice, particularly focusing on medical trauma is both common and productive for artists. So, when one is seeking catharsis from the perhaps very literal pain in their life, and feels a disconnection from the real and tangible form of the body because their own feels mysterious and displaced, what would be the best way to communicate all these concepts simultaneously? Magical Realism.
Reproductive system (and how Magical Realism can put it into words)
If you wish for your human to be able to self-duplicate, it is absolutely essential you provide reproductive organs. This is where you can add some customisation. Now, unless you’re subscribed to our Maker+ subscription service, you have two options;options: Penis and Vagina. However, this pure addition instils your person with the “shame” genome, so I would advise only referring to it as ‘phallic’ or ‘yonic’ when speaking to your finished human. If you go the yonic route, I will advise, there is far less information or avenues of repair in the case of malfunction, which it is more prone to. However, due to that pesky genome, phallic can be just as bad.
Magical Realism creates a world that is recognisably similar to our own, but noticeably strange (Wechsler 1985), this is exactly what my practice looks like. The scientific elements become wrong and fantastical to reflect my own understanding – or lack thereof – of these elements. The chart readings are nonsensical because I don’t understand my chart readings. The bodies are filled with nerves and goop and glitter because I can’t fathom the internal workings of my body, and I want to make the viewer understand that they can’t either. I want to translate the unknowledge that most people possess of their anatomy and body and imagine what it could look like. Such a mystique and feeling of disconnect from one’s body that comes with chronic dysfunction is a decidedly surreal experience. It lends itself to the Magical Realist desire to separate traumatic events from the ordinary world. As Zausner (1998:23) states, living in a complete lack of equilibrium equates to chaos theory, which brings with it both the drive to create as escapism and the feeling of experiencing a completely different reality from those around you. Especially for those with debilitating chronic, long-term or even terminal illnesses who are regularly deprived of the everyday experiences awarded to those healthy around them, Magical Realism can help make sense of that reality by embracing the surrealism and bizarreness of it.
To conclude, human beings are built badly, and we have many emotions about this fact of life. This exploration focused on my oil painting Anatomy 2, the process of creating it and its relation to my wider practice. Particularly, the way Magical Realism manifests in the form of fantastical anatomy and medical themes in my practice. With the commonness of art as a therapeutic method for creatives and a way of processing all kinds of personal trauma, it is important to recognise the affective power of Magical Realism to depict traumatic events. Especially for experiences as life-altering and isolating as a major illness. This serves as a catharsis both for the creator, by being able to effectively communicate how it feels to experience this state of disrepair and for the audience who can more viscerally empathise with it. By more literally depicting abstract concepts of depersonalisation, feelings of unreality and a general sense of strangeness and uneasiness, the genre of Magical Realism becomes an invaluable tool for the portrayal of medical trauma.
Congratulations! Before you stands a person. If you have followed all my instructions as I have communicated them, they should be in perfect working order. This state will not last, but nothing ever does.
Bibliography
Gray H (1858) Gray’s Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical. London: John W. Parker and Son.
Marvodi A, Paraskevas G, Kitsoulis B (2013) ‘The History and the Art of Anatomy: a source of inspiration even nowadays’ Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology, 118 (3): 267-276, doi: 24640590.
Wechsler J (1985) ‘Magical Realism: Defining the Indefinite’, Art Journal, 45 (4): 293-298, doi: 10.2307/776800
Faris W (2004) Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative, Vanderbilt University Press, doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv17vf68f
Roh F (1925) Nach-Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus. Probleme der neuesten europäischen Malerei, Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig
Roland H and Arva E (2015) ‘Writing Trauma: Magical Realism and the Traumatic Imagination’, Magical Realism and Trauma, 14: 7-14, doi: 031 – 2790
Shahid Abdullah A (2020) Traumatic Experience and Repressed Memory in Magical Realist Novels: Speaking the unspeakable, Cambridge Scholars’ Publishing, (10): 1-9, doi: 1-5275-4628-4
Sherratt-Bado (2018) ‘‘Things We’d Rather Forget’: Trauma, the Troubles, and Magical Realism in Post-Agreement Northern Irish Women’s Short Stories’, Open Library of Humanities Journal, 4 (2): 12, doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.247
Van der Kolk B (2015) The body keeps the score: brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma, Penguin Books, New York.
University of Hawaii Department of English (2007) Overview, Aristotle: Poetics, accessed 1/06/2024 https://www.english.hawaii.edu/criticalink/aristotle/index.html
Sontag S (1978) Illness as metaphor and AIDS and its metaphors, Farrar Straus and Giroux, New York
Haraway D (1991) ‘A cyborg manifesto: science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century’, in Simians, cyborgs, and women: the reinvention of nature, Routledge, New York, pp. 149-181
Capuani S Malgir G Chua C and Grattoni A (2022) ‘Advanced strategies to thwart foreign body response to implantable devices’ Bioengineering & Translational Medicine, 7(3), doi: 10.1002/btm2.10300
Wilson C (18 September 2023) ‘Doctors warn about the rise of people with obsolete medical implants’, New Scientist, Accessed 5/06/2024, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2392358-doctors-warn-about-the-rise-of-people-with-obsolete-medical-implants/
Malchiodi C (2020) Trauma and expressive arts therapy: brain, body, and imagination in the healing process, Guilford Press, New York
Zausner T (1998) ‘When walls become doorways: creativity and the transforming illness’, Creativity Research Journal, 11 (1): 21-28, doi: https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326934crj1101_3
Murphy R (2023) ‘Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder and Neural Correlates of Trauma-related Pathology: A Critical Review’, Innovations in clinical neuroscience, 20 (1-3): 53-59, doi: PMC10132272
Guerrilla Girls (1989) Do Women Have to be Naked to get into the Met. Museum? [Screenprint on paper], The Met, accessed 8 June 2024. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/849438
AI Declaration
This is a Declaration that I used AI (ChatGPT) to find and also summarise sources so as to narrow down what was pertinent to my research to read in its entirety.