PHOTOS: ISTVAN VIRAG (C) PUNKT Ø / MOMENTUM 9
Stathis Tsemberlidis (GR)
Transmutations of Human Bodies and Flora (2014/2017)
The contemporary human body is no longer what it used to be. That is the proposal put forward by the drawings and wall paintings in the Stathis Tsemberlidis’ installation Transmutations of Human Bodies and Flora. The installation explores an estranged human body, depersonalized – if not, dehumanized – through a complete take-over by abnormal and unexplainable biological phenomena. With references to science fiction and horror universes, the installation explores a human body that has lost its sovereign agency and is instead reconfigured by all sorts of alien agents, such as cell diseases and parasites. Far beyond the perception of the human body as a self-enclosed system, the installation depicts this body as a system, whose boundaries are precarious if not dissolved and is under the influence of foreign processes that it cannot control, neither physically nor intellectually. As such the installation suggests that we open our critical minds to wild corporeal speculation about the co-existence of the human and the non-human.
