Super Human Exhibition

My recent visit to the Wellcome Trust Gallery to see the Superhuman exhibition was both shocking and compelling. What I found of particular interest was the Manowar Legs created by artist, filmmaker and cast double amputee Mathew Barney. The cast acrylic legs were created for the film Cremaster 3, a collaborative art project, and were worn by Aimee Mullins who takes on a number of roles in the film, wearing a different set of prosthetic's for each identity, ranging from blades to Cheetah Legs. The Manowar Legs are both  elegant and beautiful, glass like in appearance the legs have no feet and curl up at the end to resembling what looks like jelly fish tentacles. In their delicate and light appearance the prosthetic legs are completely dysfunctional but are pieces of art that completely ignite the imagination.

The Manowar Legs are not only a piece of sculptural delicacy on their own, but aslo symbolize a modernistic transformation of prosthetic stereotyping. The legs are an adornment rather than a replacement to the body, they do not infer a loss but a gain. In a world where amputee’s are often perceived as being at a disadvantage, Mathew Barney’s legs create possibilities where there never was before. They give the wearer power to be whatever they choose to be and challenge ideologies of what beauty is. In a world obsessed with beauty, a person with a disability doesn’t fit into societies assumptions of what beauty should be. However Barney’s work acts as a symbol for change in the way it transform the idea of a prosthetic, turning everything we have ever thought about the purpose and appearance of prosthetics on its head. Since the 16^th century people have worn artificial limbs that resemble the body part it is impersonating so that the wearer appears to look ‘normal’. Having said this, prosthetics do serve a main purpose of improving the quality of the wearer’s life by helping them function better, but could prosthetics also serve another purpose to make the wearer look ‘normal’. Other parts of the exhibition showed leg prosthesis for children which did not benefit the children wearing them and actually made is harder to function, thus inferring the idea that the prosthetics can also be there for the rest of world and not just the wearer.

Although the legs are completely dysfunctional, they hold a light towards to future, signifying a change in the way disabilities are seen. No longer does disability seem to be a limitation but an opportunity for creative and artistic enhancement. The transparency of the legs highlight this change even further as it suggests that a person’s disability doesn’t have to be covered up or hidden in anyway. This is not to suggest that the disabled amputees of the world will turn to wearing transparent resin legs, (it would be both impractical and expensive) however it does impose a change in the way society looks at disabilities. Aimee Mullins speaks widely about the changing idea of beauty and identities. In her TED talk in 2009 she said; ‘ the conversation with society has changed profoundly in this last decade. It is no longer a conversation about overcoming deficiency. Its a conversation about overcoming augmentation; its a conversation about potential...so that people society once considered to be disadvantaged can now become the architects of their own identities..’