Event 2 Blog: Making Strange by Vivan Sundaram

            For my second event I went to the Making Strange Exhibition by Vivan Sundaram shown at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. This exhibition was actually a combination of two shows, Gagawaka and Postmortem. Gagawaka displayed garments produced by Sundaram made out of recycled trash. More applicable to the subject material of this class was Postmortem, which showcased old medical teaching supplies manipulated and sometimes combined with mannequins to showcase the artist's vision.

            Gagawaka takes on the human form and juxtaposes it against trash, what many people think of as dead and the opposite of the life represented by humans. Several examples from the exhibition follow:

Figure 1: Shoeskin Hoop, a dress made completely out of discarded shoetops

Figure 2: Dervish, an outfit made of men's silk ties

Figure 3: J S Lingerie, made out of jock straps

            Postmortem is almost the exact opposite of Gagawaka as it goes to the inside of mannequins, normally an empty space but filled with medical teaching tools by Sundaram. Postmortem is the opposite of Gagwaka in terms of aesthetic beauty as it gets down to the literal bare bones of the human body and then contorts them in disturbing ways.

Figure 4: Coffin, mannequins in a glass coffin. Notice the arm attached to the pelvic region

Figure 5: Various instructional medical models structurally rearranged

Figure 6: Spine, 2. A piece showing a fiberglass mannequin split open to show the spine within

            The combination of these two shows in one exhibition is what made it particularly interesting. The fact that the ideas behind them both were so opposite made them sharing the same space intriguing. Yet the art and science implications behind the exhibition apply primarily to Postmortem. Postmortem reverts back to the basics of medicine, even giving an idea of what artistic representations of the human body may have looked like before extensive knowledge of it was known. Simple medical models being distorted into alternative forms shows a level of experimentation not typically shown in the field of medicine anymore.

Proof that I attended the exhibition

Works Cited

Sundaram, Vivan. "Making Strange." Exhibition. Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles. 5 June 2015. Exhibition.