The internal frontier of our bodies has turned out to be as exciting as the depths of the ocean or the heights of outer space, but with infinitely more personal relevance. Science has presented us with extraordinary opportunities to voyage to the very core of our being but it is art we must rely upon to make sense of the experience on a personal level. Ariel Ruiz i Altaba’s images explore this compelling realm in which a growing understanding of the intimate machinations of the human body affects our sense of identity as individuals and as a species. Demonstrating a keen awareness of the scientific process and the broader implications of scientific discovery, the artist employs an astonishing range of techniques to reveal what is unseen and to offer the recognition that perhaps science alone isn’t eloquent enough to express our full nature.
In “Historical Natures,” the artist creates a series of stark, elegant still lifes. But instead of flowers and fruit, often used by artists to suggest the ephemeral nature of beauty and of life, Ruiz i Altaba employs more powerful and personal reminders of our mortality. Several of these compositions are dominated by a skull, isolated and centered against a dark background to intensify our concentration on it. These remains confront us with their large, empty eye sockets while another one has its back to the lens, recognizable only by the distinctive cranial zig-zags echoed by the folds of drapery on which it reposes. These functional forms have an inherent beauty, but, like the skull of Yorick discovered by Hamlet, they cannot help but remind us of past and future demise. In another image from the series, we get a glimpse of an unidentified organ floating in a specimen jar. By titling the picture You, the artist actively implicates the viewer with the remembrance of death’s inevitability, conjuring both supreme tenderness and a shudder of recognition.
Traveling inward, The Possibility of Being II shows a close-up view of a human stem cell clone teeming with latent potential. In an embryo, these develop into the variety of specialized cells that replicate and become human organs and tissues, making the possibility of being a reality. Ruiz i Altaba gives us a dynamic portrait of this extraordinary structure, enhancing our wonderment at the versatile powerhouse of nature that is presently being studied so intently for its repair and regenerative functions. In homage to the heroic characteristics of these minuscule cells and their monumental ramifications, the artist presents them in the exhibition at an overwhelming scale.
We all begin on this cellular level and within each of those units is the genetic code bequeathed to us by our parents, that which determines so much of who we will become. In his photograph Twins, Ruiz i Altaba compares genetic codes side-by-side on full-sized silhouettes of two human figures, emphasizing similarity but also presenting them as positives and negatives of each other using black and white backgrounds. Here, the artist graphically charts that inescapable human contradiction of sameness and difference that even reaches across gender or racial definitions: my insides are so much like yours and yet distinct as a fingerprint, creating an interesting tension between individuality and commonality. The extreme percentage of genetic material that is identical from one human being to the next reminds us that the “family of man” is not just a humanistic catchphrase but a fact of life. The tension between identity on a cellular level and the human perception of being utterly unique creatures is also explored in the series “Genomes.” Here, each image of a distinct face is overlaid with a layer of cells, forcing the eye to toggle between two views that cannot be successfully separated, inextricable, just as in life.
Ruiz i Altaba also uses overlapping imagery in his series “Traces,” but in a more impressionistic manner. The sense of illusion and elusiveness crucial to these works involves a complex series of steps. The figures are initially made as photograms, a technique in which bodies are placed on a sensitized surface and exposed to light, essentially tracing their own outline and establishing a direct, corporeal immediacy. Color is added by replacing the silver in the photographic paper with other metals and the final images are presented as rich pigment prints larger than life. In Birth, we see the blank canvas of an infant already imprinted with his genetic heritage, surrounded by a glowing, pulsating embrace. Inside and around him the artist has placed a thicket of excited tendrils -- neurons -- that suggest the burst of creative energy generated at the start of a new life.
These dendritic clumps reappear in the evocative portrait Eclipse, from the series “Possible to Forget,” spread across a face that meets our gaze with startling directness. Here the aggregate of lines reminds us that even with our tremendous capacity for cognition, perception, and memory, we cannot keep pace with the changes happening in even the most familiar visage on a continual basis. Our selves are never static, whether biologically or psychologically. The face appears rather otherworldly, providing only a vague and generalized stage on which a wealth of micro-changes are continuously enacted. The almost dematerialized portraits titled The Self show the external structure of a face, but the artist adds the ghost of its interior to remind us of the uncertainties inherent in firmly defining ourselves. There is an implication in these pictures that, even illuminated by recent evidence, we are not so easy to understand as a species and that there are many layers yet to explore. Can we separate who we are from what we are? No answers are offered in these provocative but elusive images, only an invitation to contemplate the question with the precision of science and the introspection of art.
Katherine Ware
Curator of Photographs, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Click here for more information about Evolving Identities in the Genetic Age
Click here to visit Ariel Ruiz i Altaba’s website
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