A Body of Others
By Artist Jude Griebel
March 22 – June 16, 2024
Opening reception: Friday, March 22, 2024 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM Free
The exhibition A Body of Others, presents a series of sculptures that explore what it means for an animal to be artificially contained as an impetus for human theory, experimentation and consumption—existing in a sanctioned world within the human factory and institution. This enquiry encompasses animals living within the confines of medical, scientific and industrial food complexes.
In the works, refurbished animal cages, salvaged from labs, clinics and industrial farms have been reconfigured to resemble human forms. These unsettling structures contain various species, meticulously crafted from wood and papier-mache. Their details finely rendered, they appear spectral and ethereal against their darkened figurative cages. The sculptures allude to animals unwillingly serving human needs–from becoming a “cheap” fast food product, to being scientifically observed, to being test subjects for the beauty industry and contemporary vaccines and medicines.
The composition of the works reference the David Pinner’s celebrated 1967 novel The Ritual, in which the protagonist becomes caged within a wicker human form as an unwitting sacrifice—one whose meaning he cannot ultimately comprehend. My sculptures visually conjure bodies that have been made invisible, pushed to the periphery of our awareness while continuing to nourish and safeguard us. While these crafted animals occupy physical space, their spectral rendering reflects the psychological distance we create, between ourselves, and their unrecognized bodies.
Speaking to current ethical debate and various institutional practices, these figurative sculptures encourage recognition, dialogue, and the promotion of new ways to acknowledge our relationship to other beings and the ways in which they impact us, individually.
About the Artist:
Jude Griebel creates intensively detailed figurative sculptures and drawings that visualize our entanglement with the surrounding world. In his works, landscapes, the species we affect, and the waste we create, coalesce in vivid forms that illustrate the reach of our impact and consumption habits. Both harbingers of ruin and agents of transformation, his works build on art historical traditions of the anthropomorphic body to reflect a planet in a state of crisis. Griebel’s work has recently been supported by residencies at institutions including Pioneer Works, New York; International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York and Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY. His work has been funded by major grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Griebel’s work is included in collections internationally including Arsenal Contemporary Art, Montreal; the Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee and the Volpert Foundation, New York. His work has recently been exhibited at C24 Gallery, New York; the Rochester Center for Contemporary Art, NY; the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art Ueno; and the Art Gallery of Alberta; Edmonton.
Learn More: judegriebel.com/
About the Contemporary Arts Program: The International Museum of Surgical Science supports a commitment to contemporary art and artists through exhibitions and programs that use the frame of contemporary artistic practice to examine new perspectives in medical-surgical science and our relationship to the body. The Museum’s Contemporary Arts Initiative includes rotating exhibitions of contemporary art, as well as an ongoing Artist in Residence program.
This project is partially supported by a CityArts Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events.
The International Museum of Surgical Science acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
