Colonial memory, bodily disgust and the politics of looking
An artwork does not need to depict blood, decay, or a mutilated body to become disturbing. Sometimes the disturbance lies in what an image makes visible. Sometimes it lies in what a society has trained itself not to see. And sometimes the most unsettling artwork is the one that exposes the viewer's own expectations: the assumption that a body should be attractive, that suffering should be presented with dignity, or that historical violence should become easier to contemplate once it enters a museum. The history of disturbing art is often told through a familiar group of European and American artists. Francisco Goya, Francis Bacon and Andres Serrano appear as milestones in a story about artists breaking the boundaries of acceptable representation. Their work matters, but this account can make one particular history of aesthetic rebellion seem universal. It suggests that artists everywhere are challenging the same definition of beauty, using the same language of transgression, for ...
