Aesthetics of fluid-preserved animal and human bodies : an example of research-based art

Abstract

"Aesthetics of fluid-preserved animal and human bodies: an example of research-based art" is based on an interdisciplinary art investigation and intervention on publicly displayed visual artifacts containing animal and human materials. It consists of this dissertation text and two of my art projects, Xenotransplantation P56 (2012) and A Dying Art (2013), which use examples from pre-modern fluid-preserved specimens.

A Dying Art is a hands-on intervention on the historical fluid-preserved specimen collection at the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, in which I investigate issues related to the dissociation of their identity with contemporary clinical medicine. A Dying Art delivers the idea that the role of Western medical museum as an institution has been continuously redefined according to changing social and cultural norms towards public display of human body parts.

Xenotransplantation P56 is an observation on a series of historical fluid-preserved specimens at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England prepared by English surgeon John Hunter in the late 1700s. Through critical analysis of this case, I propose an argument that anatomical specimens, which are preservations of actual animal and human body parts, may become subject to social controversy, misinterpretation and mystification, due to their uniquely strong cultural symbolism.