Corporal traces, utopian inventions in the work of Karin Lambrecht

Abstract

In this essay, I seek to reflect on the body and its mythologies in the 21st century, by focusingon the work of Brazilian artist Karin Lambrecht. I highlight her paintings, in which she used apigment made of blood extracted from sheep, that are sacrificed for domestic consumption ofmeat, in fabrics, sweaters and towels that belonged to her family.

The artist plays with tradition both in terms of the material she used, and in the pigment that is extracted from an ancient ritual of lamb bleeding. Her works demarcate a counterpoint to therole that, in currant dominant discourses, has been attributed to the body, as a supposed bearer of the power and complete image which is typical of scopic societies. The body, exposed in the images, refers to incompleteness: death, cycles, tradition, fragments, lack of definition between me and the other, impossibles; however, paradoxically, it presents the strength of creation from its own precarious condition. The traces of blood inscribe iconoclastic utopian inventions that counterpoint the established forms, without presenting full ideals.