tamaranth | [exhibition] Assembling Bodies, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge

Venus and DNA
Originally uploaded by tamaranth

Off to Arch&Anth this afternoon for their new exhibition, Assembling Bodies -- about ways in which the human body is depicted, turned into art, transformed, interpreted, augmented. It's absolutely fascinating and I suspect I shall be spending quite a few afternoons there.

Highlights:
- Isaac Newton's death mask (reliquaries as 'distributed bodies')
- The Human Genome Library: Chromosome 1, Volume 1. Small print, volume 1 of 119 ...
- spirit tablet from Taiwan, c1900: 'contains three male spirits, probably brothers'
- 15th-century medical astrology text
- the vox theremin (though I didn't get consistent results)
- The Head of the Blue Chip II, by Diane Harris -- unsettling cyber-head with direct gaze
fa'a fafine -- in the manner of a woman (Shigeyuki Kihara) -- a triptych of sepia-toned photographs illustrating 'third gender'

Honourable Mention:
- the caption for Willaerts' Family Group (1660) which includes the splendid euphemism "some of the figures had become ancestors". They have ceased to be. They've expired and gone to meet their maker ...