Anatomical Body

Migrating to the internal viscera, the juxtapositions in this section interrogate the historical and conceptual reconfiguration of human anatomy. In Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751), Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert advanced the epistemological claim that an understanding of human physiology offered empirical evidence of a transcendent, teleological order.

Synthesizing and expanding on anatomical paradigms codified during the Renaissance, this Enlightenment-era compendium employed intricate drawings of dissected bodies and organs to map the human body’s interiority. The écorché (flayed) sculptures and anatomical illustrations presented here occupy an uncanny, quasi-surreal terrain in which the clinical and the aesthetic converge. At once scientific model and artistic object, the écorché exposes musculature normally concealed beneath the skin, rendering the body simultaneously legible and estranged. The fashions likewise externalize internal biological structures, transforming them into visible and wearable forms. In doing so, they mediate the tension between the body as an assemblage of discrete anatomical systems and as a sentient subject endowed with existential and ontological significance. Through this visceral revelation, the designs collapse the boundary between the aestheticized exterior and the corporeal interior, confronting the fragility of the human condition and the radical transparency of the self.