Profanando o improfanável: fetos em arte

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to reflect on the increasing visibility of the embryo and fetus which, due to ever more
sophisticated imaging techniques, have become iconic images of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The fetus, often shown alone, detached from the maternal body, suggests the (partial) elision of the mother from the reproductive cycle, in the context of new reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization. From religious art of the Middle Ages where the Virgin’s pregnancy was mostly hidden to the contemporary representations of an increasingly secular and autonomous fetus, the profanatory potential of these images will be discussed. Special attention will be given to the work of artists Suzanne Anker, Helen Chadwick and Damien Hirst, as well as the writer Sylvia Plath, who through their representations of fetuses compel us to rethink contemporary and future medical practices as well as the changing cultural meanings attached to those images that increasingly circulate in our contemporary world, dominated as it is by a visual and genetic imaginary. These works will be analysed mainly through the lens of theoretical writings by historians of science such as Donna Haraway and Sarah Franklin, as well as philosophers Paul Virilio and Giorgio Agamben.