Aesthetics of Discomfort and Theory of Abjection

    From ancient civilizations to the grotesque, and to contemporary performance artists, art that causes physical discomfort can be found everywhere. Typically, body, flesh, or bodily fluids are directly used, although textures or objects can also evoke repulsion.

    My aim is to interpret some artworks using Julia Kristeva's theory of the abject, which analyses the psychological roots of disgust.

    Joel-Peter Witkin is a modern-age grotesque photographer who is obsessed with fetishizing things on the fringes of society, like real rotting corpses, dismembered body parts, and societal outcasts such as dwarfs, hermaphodites, and amputees. According to Kristeva's theory, the abject and disgust experienced when confronting the corpse is caused by the body's rejection of the presence of death. A corpse causes a breakdown in meaning; by being once alive but no more, it exists on the border between life and death. In her words, 'Abject refers to the human reaction to threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of distiction between subject and object or between self and other'. Abjection is a process which we form our identities. Being disgusted by death, I deny it, and I reinforce my identity as a living being.

    "The abject is what disrupts identity, system, and order. It does not respect borders, positions, rules.'' 

     Not violent as others, Marina & Ulay's Imponderabilia (1977) can evoke the abject for some, in a completely different way by trespassing the boundary between "private" and "public''. The abject can be experienced through intangible things, like moral values, explains Kristeva. According to this interesting study, people with conservative political views are more likely to be sensitive to physical disgusting things.

    Frida Kahlo, The Broken Column

    The display of her anatomy confronts us with abjection by disrupting the consistency of the self.

    Hermann Nitsch, Das Orgien Mysterien Theater

    Abjection establishes the infant's identity, by separating from the mother's body on an individual level, and from the animal on a social level. Kristeva sees animal sacrifice as a symbolic act that reinforces this separation.

    Hans Bellmer's Doll series cause defamiliarization of the body.

    Stellarc, Suspensions

    Skin is our border, what seperates 'us' from the outside world.

    Rebecca Horn, Overflowing Blood Machine

    Asger Carlsen - Hester