BODY WORLDS

The black walls create that instant of suspension in the breath of visitors as they come in, but above all that frame of emphasis around the anatomical sculptures emphasized by lighting.
The red colour of flesh is outstanding.
They are real bodies, dead, skinned, dissected, opened, without flesh, exploded.
Frozen in an eternal movement.
A motionless dance for our eyes.
A show, a spell that reveal the answers to the thousands questions we have forgotten to ask ourselves.
What we are.
How we are.
How we function.
What we are made of.
A big wall of red barrels in a corner shows the quantity of blood pumped by our heart and all of a sudden we can even feel it, that small muscle inside ourselves, as it beats fast, gaining a voice, in the middle of all that black which is our ignorance.
And in the middle of so much science, so much physical concreteness, a title that reminds us that we are not only made of flesh and mechanics: broken hearts.
We have a soul as well.

*Gunther von Hagens (Germany, 10th January 1945), pathologist and inventor of plastination: a process that allows to perfectly preserve tissues and organs by replacing the body fluids with silicon rubber, a technique that makes organic finds stiff and odourless, without altering their colours.
*BODY WORLDS is based on an original programme for the donation of bodies curated by the German Institute for Plastination, that has more than 13,000 registered donors. http://www.koerperspende.de/en.html