Care and Wear: Bodies Crafted for Harm and Healing

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Crash test dummy head, circa 1970, rubber, steel, paint, (photo by Blaine Campbell)

One of the more striking bodies within the Esker Foundation’s exhibition Care and Wear: Bodies Crafted for Harm and Healing stands in relatively good condition and does not have the eerily uncanny appearance of the other objects in the show. A suitably olive green, Second World War American Army-issue bayonet manikin from the 1940s with its stuffed head and chest appears to be nearly brand new other than a concise knife wound to the chest and two to the face. In contrast to the other objects on display, its total lack of human features makes its purpose of depersonalizing an imaginary enemy all the more apparent.

Part of what makes this manikin so alluring is its origin from a place normally hidden away and unseen from public eyes. This manikin, like others in the exhibition, is sourced from locations such as military training grounds, vehicle crash test sites, or dental training schools–sites which are hidden inversions of our usual societal order. Part of what makes the collection of the Museum of Fear and Wonder so endlessly fascinating to audiences has been its ability to deliver objects from these hidden, other places. These objects reveal what would otherwise have stayed concealed, enabling the object’s psychological power to flourish in front of us.

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WWII American Army-issue bayonet manikin, circa 1940, canvas, (photo by Blaine Campbell)

On display at the Esker Foundation in Mohkinstsis/Calgary until Dec. 17, Care and Wear presents the first exhibition from the collections of The Museum of Fear and Wonder outside of its Bergen, Alta. home. Started in 2017 by brothers and collaborators Brendan and Jude Griebel, the museum houses an ever-growing archive of over 6,000 historic craftworks of unique psychological and narrative qualities. Care and Wear is a curated selection of 53 of the museum’s bodily craftworks originating between 1850 and 1988 from across the globe. These medical models, dolls, dummies, and carnival props describe how crafted bodies have been created to either provide comfort and medical care or to withstand distress, assuming the place of a live person in situations that would be too injurious.

Care and Wear’s historical content is a noticeable departure for the Esker Foundation, an eminent platform for contemporary art programming in Canada. Curators Brendan, an anthropologist, and Jude, an artist, are both astutely aware of the histories of museum spaces. Although their objects are of historical origin, the contemporary gallery frame surrounding them allows the exhibition to hold a network of meanings and truths together in the same moment. A traditional museum space, with its more apparent colonial baggage, may try to explain or narrow down the connotations of each object. The Griebels’ collection is displayed as an archival body that can inform our discussions on bodies today. The artifacts are presented in the gallery on large open tables without discernible demarcation or order. This allows for interplay among and across the intimate lives of touch, abuse, and repair in the world of each artifact.

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Columbia Dentoform teeth set, circa 1930. metal, (photo by Blaine Campbell)

In a contemporary context, this bodily archive is specially positioned to wade into current discourses on our psychological connections to bodies and their representations. The crash test dummy affectionately named “Brian” or the faceless dental training phantom speak more clearly about attempts to humanize the inanimate or objectify the other than any didactic text could. The exhibition chronicles a century and a half of changes in human craft and manufacturing but it could just as easily serve as a 138-year speculation on the idea of a “standard” body. Many of the artifacts are imbued with historical, corporate, and individual notions of a default body (typically a Caucasian male) to the detriment of those that went uncrafted. ■

On display at the Esker Foundation in Mohkinstsis/Calgary until Dec. 17, Care and Wear presents the first exhibition from the collections of The Museum of Fear and Wonder outside of its Bergen, Alta. home.

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