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Graduate colloquium

Christina García’s presentation consists of the following: In a series of ink drawings over the pages of a nineteenth century medical encyclopedia containing illustrations of human anatomy, the contemporary Cuban artist, Roberto Fabelo, produces a catalogue of figures displaying zoological physiognomies. Overlapping the precise, uniform incisions of the text’s original engravings with sketchy, gestural cross-hatching, Fabelo transforms tissue, capillaries, cavities, muscles and bone into aesthetic material. While these images produce hybrid morphologies on an iconographic level, I aim to demonstrate that the crossing of species identities does not simply remain at the safe distance of the fantastic. In the juxtaposition of clinical, two-dimensional illustrations and volumetric chiaroscuro we can observe agitated lines that subvert the privileged position of the human.

Lauren Gaskill’s presentation consists of the following: Julio Cortázar, in the introduction to photography book, Humanario, by Sara Facio and Alicia d'Amico, reverses orders of signification for our conceptions of sanity and insanity, or in his words, locura y cordura. He suggests, if Pinochet, Eichmann, Mengele, and Hitler, were all considered to be on the side of cordura, then perhaps it is better to identify with locura. Analyzing photography and text in novel, Augustine. La loca de Charcot, by Argentine author Lydia Tolchinsky-Pinkus, and distilling a theoretical approach from the photography in Humanario, I explore the possibility that, in certain situations, it is better to be on the side of the insane, and that more importantly, the binary that divides sanity and insanity must be questioned.