“Operation Space Surgery” by Gabriele Gervickaite

Operation Space Surgery

“I think of my body – wires and screws in it, and marks of scalpel on my skin. My studio is a surgery room where I cut up electrical tapes and turn them into torsos. Here I reorganize body parts and bones. By exploring the body as medium, the surgical process as performance and the relationship between the two, I construct a cyborgian organism. I design life-sustaining systems for this hybrid.

My materials – prosthetics, medical corsets, gauze, bandages, adhesive tapes – are marks of personal experiences. They fix memories of anesthesia as an otherworldly exodus. Surgery turns into a space odyssey, a flight, a trippy departure to other forms of existence. My works are charged with eroticism, because this surgical operation triggers queer intimacies. When bodies get in touch, hierarchies between them, repressed phantasies and silenced phobias are stripped bare.”

Gabriele Gervickaite, an artist with a disability, lives and works in Lithuania (Vilnius).