Ciało jako przedmiot praktyk ascetycznych w sztuce współczesnej (Opałka, Dudek-Durer, Orlan)
Body as an object of ascetic practices in contemporary art (Opałka, Dudek-Durer, Orlan)

Summary/Abstract: I’d like to consider the activities of three artists – Roman Opałka, Andrzej Dudek-D¨urer and Orlan – as a contemporary form of asceticism. If we envisage a homeostatic relation between body and mind to be a “normal state”, the asceticism tends to undermine it. In the perspective of asceticism body is a ballast which should undergo practices of depreciation. Although these practices are justified in religious contexts, in a context of the art and secularized culture they seem to be an aberration. I’d like to outline motivations of Opałka, Dudek-D¨urer and Orlan and relations between body and mind which their art evokes. Do they really act at the edge of pathology or do they rather express – may be extremely – the condition of contemporary human being and his or her body?

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