What if we were to change the context of recognizable signs so that they no longer have their syntactical anchor. The work presented in this exhibition is intended to allow viewers to reflect upon and reassess their own ideas about the culturally constructed body. A layered and psychologically complex work, it is imbedded with familiar imagery and objects that are juxtaposed to allow for infinite re-combinations, displacing the logic of our present mode of mental and visual consciousness. The unstable combinations subvert our expectations in order to create provocative and mysterious new signifiers that are meant to challenge the viewers, to confront their own beliefs and to create a new narrative not bounded by prescribed codes of behaviour and stereotypical constructs in order to emphasize the different levels at which meaning is generated.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT
Whether you choose as your authority, Descartes or Koestler, the trap of Enlightenment's dualistic celebration of the ascendancy of the rational over nature and the separation of mind and body, remains. So strongly entrenched and insistent is this particular influence in our social and cultural traditions that it permeates all disciplines. The very foundation of modernity is built upon the myth that the spirit presides over nature, the mind over the body. It is the Ghost that animates the Machine.

In the legacy of the mind/body split, Descartes' separation of the soul from nature, consciousness is accorded a position over and above the biological and consequently, the body, lifted from its dark, irrational, unclassifiable and unpredictable nature, is tidily reduced to a mechanical apparatus in a regulated, utilitarian system, a site for scientific interest, contained within specified boundaries. Freud, fearful of the body's murky 'uncanniness' was quite insistent in his theory of somatic compliance in which the body conforms to psychical demands, a fashionable study in scientific circles of the time.

The body, according to Foucault is the product of modern technologies and institutions, whose inscriptions impose upon it a culturally constructed identity that imprisons us in models of subjectivity and upholds stable categories in the discourse of power. They regulate and restrict the body's visibility, organization and functionality, a controllable unit with a rigid structure. The body disappears in the highly regulated, artificial, disciplined and mechanized functioning of the utopian machine. However we continue to dredge the hidden wounds and lacerations of the dystopian body. In spite of the ravages we persist in accepting the baggage of unbending gendered demands, the 'body of unbearable weight' according to Susan Bordo. Women have traditionally carried the burden of the body as object, nature-bound, to be exploited in the mind/body disconnect. Identified with demonic nature that will escape regulation, they generate the anxiety of loss of control and thus engender a 'desire mixed with dread' (Hal Foster) that can in turn manifest in unprecedented violence.

However we find that the body is resistant. It will not act according to the rules. Julia Kristeva, in the Powers of Horror, recognized that we are faced with 'the forgotten body, one continually disturbing the established systems of identity and order. One that does not respect boundaries, positions, rules: the in-between, the ambiguous, the composite.' Through its diversity, multiplicity and indeterminacy it allows for complex adaptive strategies to emerge, mocking the traditional perceptions of science and technology. The Ghost that is haunting the Machine may be the body itself that by its uncontrolled and unpredictable, biological nature will escape any kind of regulation and containment.

The work presented in this exhibition, on view at the Red Head Gallery in Toronto in April 2004, is intended to allow viewers to reflect upon and reassess their own ideas about the culturally constructed body. A layered and psychologically complex work, it is imbedded with imagery and objects that are juxtaposed to allow for infinite re-combinations, displacing the logic of our present mode of mental and visual consciousness. This, in order to create provocative and mysterious new signifiers that are meant to challenge the viewers, to confront their own beliefs and to create a new narrative not bounded by prescribed codes of behaviour and stereotypical constructs of the dominant historical discourse.

Texts cited:
Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight
Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror