One of my favorite parts about the Museo de Escultura is an altarpiece showing a miracle of Saints Cosmas and Damian.
It's the one over my right shoulder. It's actually quite disturbing. Basically, it shows an early leg transplant. The most well-known miracle of Saints Cosmas and Damian is that they were able to provide a guy who had lost his leg to gout or cancer or some other malady with a new one. In the original tale, the leg donor is a deceased Ethiopian. The most terrifying aspect about the altarpiece in the photo is that the leg donor is grimacing and clutching his left leg at the knee, implying that perhaps he wasn't deceased after all, and that Cosmas and Damian cut the leg off of a black man because they could.
And by favorite parts, I mean one of the most impactful or disturbing aspects of the museum. The perception of bodies and people (who gets to feel pain? who gets to voice it? which bodies get personhood or not?) is constantly changing over the course of history. Ways of treating people that we now consider unjust were once considered normal, and the march of time just shows that we should still keep fighting for equality, conscientious treatment of others, and justice.
No comments:
Post a Comment