Benjamin Lignel

I have been working for the last couple of years on series of pieces that try to map out how our perception of the body has changed, as new practices in medicine, body adornment and corporeal aesthetics influence, and sometimes contradict, more traditional views of the body, and the way we interact with it. My working hypothesis is that a vulgarization of medical knowledge on the one hand, and the explosion of body-altering products and practices on the other hand, will have a lasting effect on how we project ourselves on (in?) the body. For starters, the 19th century notion of corporeal integrity, premissed on the conservation of the body as a whole (one indivisible organism), is rapidly being superseded by the notion of body as Work in Progress: the question is less and less whether your body is intact, pure, but which version you are currently using. And, what sort of dressing would you like with it.


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