The Third Body* 2018
BARZAJ (برزخ ) | El Ranchito Marruecos, 2018. Centro de Residencias Artísticas, Matadero Madrid.
The third body is what has not yet become.
The third body as yet an undefined, ambiguous, and queer space of negotiation.
The third body explores the metamorphosis of the oriental body* under Western influence. It examines the hegemonic gaze of the other through orientalism and issues of hyper-sexualization and industrialization that are jeopardizing the identity of the body as it is defined by the culture that produces and conditions it. The body as an incessant dynamic of deterritorialization*.
The third body explores how the hybrid body* is shaped in the context of war, violence, immigration, and hyperglobalization. Sifting through visual archives; such as footage released from Abu Ghraib and movies produced by the porn industry to be consumed largely, passing by critical moments like the Arab Spring, the crisis in Syria, or events like Real Madrid winning the Champions League for the 13th time; this work aims to research how the body has been bounded, violated, bombed, decapitated, destroyed, regenerated, plastified, exhibited, veiled, unveiled, colonized, double-colonized, stereotyped, displaced, burned, fetishized, pathologized, commodified, racialized, genderified, oppressed.
*The third body is based on the term of third space developed by postcolonial studies.
* the oriental body: in reference to “Le corps oriental” an essay by Abdelkebir Khatibi (1938-2009) where he analyzes the social, cultural and aesthetical aspects of the anthropological body.
*deterritorialization: according to Deleuze & Guattaris’ Anti-Oedipus , this term refers to a constant process of transformation and decontextualization/recontextualization of a set of relations within a place.
*hybrid body: Hybridity as the process of cultural negotiation between the colonizer and the colonized resulting in translating the identity of the colonized (Other) into something new, and as this process is incorporated into globalization.
View of the Exhibition:
