On
Thursday afternoon, I went to check out the "Making Strange: Gagawaka
& Postmortem" exhibit at UCLA’s Fowler Museum. Interestingly enough,
this was my first trip to the Fowler Museum during my time here as an
undergraduate at UCLA, so that was alone was really cool. This particular “Making
Strange” exhibit highlighted the work of Vivan Sundaram, who is a contemporary
artist currently residing in India. The entire exhibit was broken into two
parts – “Gagawaka” (which consisted of a bunch of outfits and garments made
from recycled materials) and “Postmortem” (which consisted of a bunch of
abstract sculptures modeled after the human body).
Personally,
I was really interested in the “Postmortem” section of the exhibit, because at
first – I was confused by the purpose of the sculptures and the pieces of
artwork. All of the pieces were slightly odd in the sense that they weren’t
accurate portrayals of the human body, but rather, they were symbolic of
greater meaning. Fortunately, the exhibit featured a video that explained the
purpose of the “Postmortem” exhibit, which was to make a “wider set of
commentaries about the human body and social concerns related to aging and
illness” (Fowler.UCLA.edu).
My
favorite parts of the exhibit were the “Large and Small Shelf Objects (2013),”
most of which were made using fiberglass and/or wood. These objects caught my
attention from across the room, primarily because all of them were so complex
and symbolic that you really had to STOP and THINK about the message behind
their construction. Each object pieced together
different parts of the human body (and some featured external add-ons, not from
the human body) to create a new bodily purpose or to suggest some type of
social meaning. Either way, all of these objects were really fascinating and I’m
really glad that I got to witness the tying together of art and science in
Vivan Sundaram’s work.
