COVID-19 and Immersive Installation: Annette Messager’s “Penetrables"

COVID-19 and Immersive Installation: Annette Messager’s “Penetrables"

Annette Messager’s immersive installation Penetration brings the beholder inside of the body into a forest of organs. The work takes up the iconography of medical and scientific illustration, a specific tradition of knowledge production that calls for re-examination considering our recent and ongoing experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, and, more specifically, the imaging of the virus. This essay primarily interrogates how the body and selfhood might be conceived of differently.

Read More