Anne-Sophie Miclo

Doctoral candidate, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

The Body as a Scaffold, the Back as a Canvas: Tim exhibited, Tim reified? (in French)

Wim Delvoye, Tim (2006-2008)
Tim Steiner sitting for Tim, Museum of the Old and New Art, Hobart
Photo: Courtesy Studio Wim Delvoye

Linked as much to its creator Wim Delvoye as it is to its namesake Tim Steiner, Tim (2006) is a singular work. From the tattooing session of Tim Steiner’s back alongside the pigs who were undergoing the same experience in 2006, to the holding of the exhibition Tim at the MONA in April 2020 in an empty museum (following the closing of the venue due to the pandemic), the evolution of the Tim exhibition modes conveys an increasingly assumed and proclaimed reification, leading the carrier of the work to state that “my back is the canvas.” This presentation foregrounds the reification of the body through its various exhibitions. To this end, the variations and evolutions of the Tim exhibition apparatuses (pedestals, lighting, duration) will be compiled and studied through the prism of pre-existing exhibitionary apparatuses (human zoo, tableau vivant, performance), requiring one to rethink the subject/object dialectic in this artwork.

Anne-Sophie Miclo is an adjunct professor and doctoral candidate in art history at UQAM. Supported by the FRQSC, her doctoral research explores the impact of the living on museum practices. She is a student member of Figura, centre de recherche sur le texte et l’imaginaire as well as Groupe de recherche et de réflexion CIÉCO : Collections et impératif évènementiel/The Convulsive Collections. She is the author of several texts and exhibition catalogues about contemporary art practices. Her essay, titled “Three Variations on the Theme of Extinction: Looking Anew at the Art and Science of Mark Dion,” will soon come out in the volume Animals, Plants and Afterimages: The Art and Science of Representing Extinction, to be published by Berghahn Books in 2022.

http://cieco.umontreal.ca
http://figura.uqam.ca