Projektet Homo Carnôsa er mange elementer, tråde, udstillinger og forskelligartede værker. Det er en tanke og en tilgang. Projektet arbejder med at intervenere betragteren, f.eks. i kæmpe blødrøde kødbilleder, der bryder ind i betragteren og både tiltrækker og frastøder, fordi her kortsluttes vore tillærte systemer, fordi her bliver det sansede rum grænseoverskridende, ærligt og direkte. Fordi indlejret i det sanselige er en ikke-sproglig intervenering, som forbinder betragteren med sit organiske udgangspunkt og fællesskab, fællesskabet vi deler med alt andet organisk liv på planeten. En fælles forbundenhed Signe Vad tror er nødvendig, for at omstille vores livsform til en fremtids-holdbar samfundskonstruktion.

 A Blueprint of Passion

Text by Elena Lundquist Ortiz and Astrid Wang

In the series Homo Carnōsa (The fleshy human) the body is turned inside out and we find ourselves in the midst of the wet, red darkness of the abdominal cavity. The camera has zoomed in to the point where the forms become unrecognizable and abstract. The photographic works unfold as monumental, bloody landscapes: the soft, vulnerable human body has shed its skin casing to unveil its inner workings like a map. This cartography of flesh is devoid of coordinates and compass points; it consists of unravellings and decodings, without beginning or end, centre or periphery.

For millennia we have disciplined and restrained the unruly body, discipline being the hallmark of the civilised human being. The needs, desires and instincts of the body are strictly controlled, and what cannot be controlled is suppressed in the realm of the abject and taboo – concealed and silenced behind the polished surface of the skin. Science, on the other hand, has scrutinised human anatomy in minute detail, naming its components, demarcating organs and defining their functions to replace the uncontrollable, shameful body with a neutralised, teleological entity, the main function of which is to fulfil the design of evolution.

There is a third body, which cannot be contained by cultural taboos or scientific classification. The real body. The entirety that constitutes our being-in-the-world. It is this vigorous, chaotic and passionately sensing body that exposes the inadequacies of language. The language of science is the Latin of classification and designation. Homo Carnōsa appropriates Latin terminology to disrupt its hegemony and liberate the lifeblood – a lifeblood that refuses to be contained by rationality and the superego of reason, but undermines its control and points literally and aesthetically inwards towards the lost Dionysian state in which we forget ourselves – if only for the split second of the image.

Hvem er Homo Carnõsa...

Jeg lå helt stille i mange tider, en afledning fik mig til at stå. Horisontalt kunne jeg scanne landskabet, skue ud over landskabet af former, af skaller – nogle smuldrede andre sprøde og skarpe, alle proppet med blød masse, smilende som æg. Indefra begyndte min hud at sitre, krampe, forstrække sig, boble. Berøring var en eksplosion som forbandt mig, fragmenter i sanseligt fællesskab.. mødet med et andet væsen.

There Are No More Dolls in the Closet – Only a Respirator
Duration 16:18 min.

videowork 2018 (udsnit)