Courtesy of the artist.
Battleboro Museum & Art Center
10 Vernon Street
Brattleboro, VT 05301
March 16 – June 16, 2024
The work in Out of Body was inspired by the phenomena of faith healing, or remote psychic healing. I mined Islamic medical and anatomical manuscripts from the 11th–17th centuries as well as 15th-century European alchemical iconography. I consider these primary sources to be objects of art rather than mere biological diagrams. They transcend the corporeal and hint at attempts to locate the soul. The body becomes a vehicle of psychological metaphors, portraying conflicts and dilemmas. A recurring image in Out of Body is a disembodied hand reaching into a wound, echoing the Gospel of Thomas, in which the hand of a doubting disciple probes Christ’s wound to find proof of the incorporeal spirit of divinity.
The process of art making requires suspending one’s participation in the physical plane to receive suggestions from the unconscious, which could also be understood as the realm of the Divine. I make my work in full participation with the mysterium tremendum, or the “numinous”—the awe-inspiring space in which I confront my demons, my gods, and the liminal between.
—Samira Abbassy