Ever since Conceptual Art reached its peak in the mid 1970s, artists have increasingly re-integrated figurative elements in their work. Human figure became a prominent feature in video, installation and performance as these art forms have been shaped by the politics of identity in the final decades of the twentieth century. It would seem that artists regarded the body as the most suitable means of communicating issues and concerns affecting the life as we know it right down to its physical crudeness while transportingt their activities beyond the confines of the elitist gallery space.
Body As an Instrument of Socio-Political Critique in Performance Art
For example, Marina Abramovic’s performance and video installation Balkan Baroque employs the idea of the body in her reflection upon the barbarity of the Balkan war in the 1990s. Even from a photographic documentation of her performance, the association of the body subjected to violence has a powerful impact on the viewer.
There are two kinds of bodies in Abramovic’s performance, the artist herself, who sits on the huge pile of bloody bones, and the mass of bones representing human remains. As the wild-haired Abramovic washes the blood off the bones, interaction takes place between the artist, who becomes the object of the performance, and the bones which, subject to her action, are no longer static objects but active elements leaving traces of blood on her long white gown. In the Balkan Baroque, artist’s body is the primary medium and an instrument of socio-political criticism.
Addressing Sex and Gender and Subverting of Traditional Femininity in Contemporary Art
Apart from the political critique the body has been used to address other pressing issues, such as sex and gender. The twentieth century art has seen a rise in female artists addressing the position and role of women in society as well as in the arts, as artists and objects. Gender and sexuality became another field of exploration and a defining factor in the production, viewing and understanding of art.
Works by some female artists engaged with the theme of domesticity. However, they reworked the traditional associations of feminine activities taking place in the typically feminine space of the privacy of the home in such ways that the conventional notion and values of femininity were contested.
Interaction Between Body and Space in Installation Art
Interpreting the theme of space, and its aspects of confinement and exposure, echoes through Mona Hatoum’s work. Her installation Homebound is suggestive of both, a home and a prison. The kitchen space she constructed contains objects of everyday use, which became increasingly a common practice of the present-day art. It is inhabited by furniture, domestic equipment and utensils but there is nothing homely or cosy to it. The room is just a bare and cold skeletal structure.
As Gill Perry points out, its material (metal) and its textures (wire, mesh) as well as the electrical current running through the objects, are ‘reminiscent of methods of torture’ (1). Hatoum’s treatment of the subject of domesticity thus carries connotations with respect to the role of women for whom the home becomes a prison, but also with respect to the political regimes where for some, the prison can become a home.
Another of Mona Hatoum’s installations, Light Sentence, also deals with the theme of imprisonment. Corridors made of wire-mesh walls, again suggestive of a prison, are set in slow motion. The viewer is required to enter and walk between the walls but the motion of the structure means that the distinction between the open and the enclosed space is unclear.
Moreover, the viewing position of the spectator alters. This leads to disorientation and confusion so that the viewer is forced to make his or her own sense of the work, depending on the specific configuration of the installation’s elements the viewer is experiencing. The spatial ambiguity, the active participation of the spectator in the construction of the meaning as well as the spectator’s kinetic participation constitute further characteristics of the contemporary art.
Beyond the Gallery Space: Landscape and Cityscape Art
The growing concern for commercialism of art and its institutions encouraged artists to work outside the confinement of the gallery, to remove art from its isolation and re-integrate their works within both, urban and natural life.
Installations began to be mounted in architectural and environmental settings, thus becoming organic parts of city- and landscape. Site-specificity intensifies the impact of the installation that is generated through the interaction of the work and the site’s historical, cultural or natural context.
James Turrell manipulated and utilized the natural qualities of the desert landscape to transform the Roden Crater into a permanent installation intended for spiritual contemplation of the universe. Thus by altering already existing location into a certain kind of space, he has created a new realm that enables the viewer to reflect on the world and his or her relationship to it in different ways. This realm, however, can only be fully explored by the spectator who physically interacts with the space. Art yet again requires human presence.
(1) Gill Perry, ‘Dream houses: installations and the home’, in Book 4: Themes in Contemporary Art, p. 270
Bibliography:
Book 4: Themes in Contemporary Art, edited by Gill Perry and Paul Wood, Yale University Press, 2004
To see more of Marina Abramovic's work please visit Marina Film Project at Marinafilm.com.
Zuzana Minarikova - I live in London and work in publishing in Bloomsbury which is an exciting part of London, full of museums, galleries, bookshops and ...
