Forensic Series

Artist's Statement


(in memory of the Italian journalist and writer Luciano della Mea)

For the creation of this body of work I focused my attention on x-ray images and autopsy. The x- ray images intrigue me because of their unique way to turn the solid forms of the human body into ghostly masses of light and shadows. Within their vagueness they reveal our intimate inner structures that the naked eye cannot perceive. Autopsy interested me because it is the branch of Forensic Science that investigates the causes of a body's death. However in these drawings the reference to autopsy is rather loose. At a first glance these images seem to represent dead bodies. A closer view reveals that they are more about the living than the dead because they depict people who have gone through surgery and carry inside them screws, pins, plates, pacemakers and other surgical devices. While these alien objects are a direct allusion to physical injury, pain and healing, the text, lightly written in pencil on them, evokes a different source of pain: the one inflicted upon us by words. The idiosyncratic juxtaposition of text that implies emotional needs, rejection, insecurity, recrimination etc. and the 'see-through' images of the human body with their ambiguity that blurs the boundary between life an death, is a reminder of the frailty and vulnerability of each of us as an anatomical and emotional being.

Copyright © 2006 Betty Bastai. All Rights Reserved.