Body as Medium

Using the body as a medium not only connotes a strong sense of human presence, but also a timeless immediacy so as to take the viewer directly into the moment the work was made and the life that made it. Sometimes artists create works through use of their hair, nails, blood, etc. extracted from their own living bodies, and other times the dead bodies of others are utilized. Historically the latter has occurred frequently in funerary arts and ritual adornments made either for or from the dead. Since everyone had a body, it is acts as a universal medium that is relatable to all viewers. At the same time, it is perhaps the most individual and personal means an artist has to incorporate him or herself into the artwork.

When I was an adolescent I was privileged to be able to visit New York City on one occasion. In one of the museums my mother and I toured during our stay, I saw a strange piece of performance art that I will never forget. Upon coming to the top of the stairs to the second floor of the museum, I was shocked to behold a small, thin wisp of a woman dressed in a white body suite and writhing in slow motion on the floor in the corner of the hallway. My inexperienced brain did not see it as art at first... I was troubled and concerned for the woman’s health/sanity. To this day I have no idea what message she was trying to send, but I appreciate the learning experience. That woman showed me that the human body itself can be used as a whole to create art.

Later in adolescence I went through a rather dark artistic phase during which I often used my own blood as a medium for painting and writing. Even now when I see those works, the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention and I immediately flash back to the intoxicating moments when I was so overtaken with emotion that I could spill my own blood for the sake of artistic expression. Though I am grateful to have had those powerful experiences, I couldn’t do it again. To many humans, myself included, the body is quite sacred. Perhaps it is this notion in particular that serves to send such a poignant and personal message when an artist choses to visually share his or her own flesh with viewers.