The Body Anatomical, the Body Autobiographical
What is the relationship of body and soul?
Anatomy labs are careful to separate the body from the soul, the donor from their original identity. The lab processes bodies, obscuring personal details that can identify the living person, forbidding photography and circulation of specimen images. Yet the donor is called a “teacher” at the McMaster anatomy lab, and when the specimen degrades, they are given a cremation and remains are returned to the family.
Historically, body parts have had great cultural, religious, and personal significance—a place of the sacred and personal autobiography. The human body is the house and doorway to the human soul and to God. Holy relics are the isolated body parts of saintly persons, housed in ornate cases and visited by pilgrims who ask for grace, blessing, and healing from God.
Two widely practiced religious forms using anatomical bodies are the ex-voto and the memento mori.
The Memento Mori, literally “Remember death,” or “remember [that you too] must die,” a medieval Catholic devotional form, reminds the living to be humble before God and to do good works (before Judgment Day). Author Mary Shelley emphasizes a warning against scientific hubris in her novel Frankenstein with the Bible verse, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Traditional memento mori in Victorian Britain often depicted a skeleton or skull among signs of life’s fragility and fleeting time—the burning candle, the butterfly, flowers, fruit, sands in the hourglass.
The Ex-Voto, literally “from a vow,” is a [religious] offering to God given in fulfillment of one’s vow. Traditionally offered in thanks for one’s survival from illness, injury, hardship, or the healing of loved ones, these offerings have taken the form of a narrative painting, or of plaster or plastic body parts hung inside the church. Artists like Frida Kahlo embraced Mexican ex-voto paintings and their 3 components: the tragedy/illness/hardship from which the grateful penitent was rescued, a written narrative explaining what happened, and a representation of God.
In this art project, we sketched anatomical specimens at the McMaster Anatomy lab to create modern memento mori and ex-votos.
How do we relate the anatomical body and the soul in the present day?
Is it frightening to remember death, or can it be joyful and life-affirming?