Title: Divine Fabrica
Dimensions: 80x120cm
Technique: screenprint and etching.
Edition: It is not an edition, there are 3 artist proofs, 2 of which are on hand dyed paper.
Divine Fabrica analises late medieval and early modern anatomical drawings, lying at the crossroad between religious and scientific understandings of the body. Visual and textual references to two key works, Vesalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica and the bible, it explores the construction of the gendered body.
God created man in His own image
and caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam
and from his side he created Eve
(Genesis 2)
The organs of generation are the same
on the male and the female, for if you turn
the scrotum, the testicles and the penis inside out
you will have all the genital organs of the female
(Vesalius, De Humani Corporis Fabrica)
Early scientific modern anatomy inscribes gender difference into the flesh, woman derived from man by the supreme surgeon has organs that reflect her biblical origins. The neck of the uterus is an inward undeveloped penis, where male and female eyaculate unite to create a child. In this view, the vagina doesn't have a symbolic space of its own, it only exists as an immature version of the phallus. Eve is cursed for original sin, the power of creation detached from her shamed sexuality and instead possessed by a male God.
The snake, hybrid monster defies God's order, for 'it' stands in-between, a perverse body lacking a reproductive function, it is doomed to lust.
