EC Event 1: Fowler Museum

For my first extra credit event, I went to the Fowler Museum at UCLA.  I knew that this museum was here, but without DESMA 9, I probably wouldn’t have ventured to explore this part of campus.

Upon entry, I first looked at the Singular Spaces in Spanish Art Environments exhibit, which wrapped along all the hallways around the courtyard of the building. These photographs were particularly interesting to me because I studied abroad in Barcelona, Spain this past summer and was able to see connections between the art and architecture in the photos and my memories of my time there. 

The exhibit that I feel incorporated science and art the most was Making Strange Gagawaka + Postmortem. Gagawaka and Postmortem are paradoxical exhibits. Gagawaka presents 27 “wearable, sculptural garments made from recycled materials and medical supplies.” In the projected movie shown in the exhibit, Sundaram said “anything that doesn’t have a permanence should be dismantled.” In Postmortem, he does this by displaying somewhat broken, anatomical models. Postmortem seeks to explore the inside of human bodies by displaying partially dismembered, hollow mannequins filled with incomplete, plastic organs. Gagawaka displays the outside shell that humans embrace and wear.  Together, these exhibits encompass the external and internal aspects of beauty and the human body.

This exhibit reminded me the most of our DESMA units on medicine and medtech.  Not only did Sundaram use medical supplies to create the majority of garments, but also he sought to modify our external by creating a type of armor.  Although these dresses are obviously only temporary, I can see the same motivation behind the artwork as in body modification surgery.  Additionally, Postmortem exposes the anatomy of the human body just like Vesalius did in the sixteenth century.

Sundaram, Vivan. "Making Strange: Gagawaka + Postmortem." Fowler Museum at UCLA. 06 June 2015.