The modern spirit is vivisective
With The Modern Spirit is Vivisective Francesca Catastini embarks on a visceral and cutting-edge journey inside the human body, to explore anecdotes and unmask misleading beliefs behind the study of Anatomy in the past.
The ancient anatomical theatres are her starting point. The lost functionality of these spaces, suspended in a remote limbo between the carnality of death and the quest for knowledge, leads her to embrace dissection and vivisection, metaphorically, as an aesthetic performance. Presented as an eclectic cabinet of curiosities, her austere yet ironical images merge and mingle with found photographs of old anatomy labs and blind students’ archives, with appropriated frontispieces of Renaissance Anatomy manuals and quirky illustrations. Together, these materials form a telescopic structure divided into overlapping sections, each relating to the various actions involved in every dissection: looking, touching, cutting and discovering.
Federica Chiocchetti, The Photocaptionist
