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Wednesday September 13, 2006

Yay(?): Miami is getting the Bodies exhibition. It opens in (of all places) the old Virgin record store in The Shops at Sunset Place, September 22. Update: Interestingly, the article doesn’t mention which organization is bringing the exhibit.

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  1. NicFitKid    Wed Sep 13, 09:58 AM #  

    Yay(?) is right. How deeply weird is it that the filleted and rubberized corpses of what may be Chinese political prisoners are being displayed at a subpar South Miami mall for the public’s viewing pleasure?



  2. Manola Blablablanik    Wed Sep 13, 01:28 PM #  

    Oh man, just the thing you want to go see after eating at Johnny Rocket’s.

    That store space had a huge window display on US 1. I wonder what they’re going to do with that?



  3. Tere    Wed Sep 13, 02:06 PM #  

    I’m there. I’m getting up a group to go.



  4. Jim Carroll    Wed Sep 13, 02:19 PM #  

    These are people who died. Died.



  5. oldswish    Wed Sep 13, 03:02 PM #  

    How poetic, a store that died, hosting…. This is conceptual art at its best.



  6. cuba59    Wed Sep 13, 03:30 PM #  

    another weird “businessman” who likes to make the big and fast money with those bodies. may be someone knows this guy from germany and the big public discussions on tv and everywhere…



  7. NicFitKid    Wed Sep 13, 03:30 PM #  

    It’s not so much that they’re dead (hey, nobody gets out of life alive), but the source of the cadavers. There’s no documented informed consent saying that these individuals agreed to have their remains used for research or education, as the bodies were all unclaimed in their native China. Did they really go unclaimed, or did the Chinese government fail to notify the family of their loved one’s death while in state custody?

    The Chinese government isn’t particularly friendly to Falun Gong practioners, democracy activists, or even its own ordinary criminals. In cases dealing with these “class enemies,” the government can play it fast and loose concerning the disposition of any remains. There’s been concern about its policy of organ harvest from prisoners, and one has to wonder as to the fate of human remains belonging to political or religious activists who die or disappear while in state custody. Some of those young, healthy bodies artistically sliced and diced for display may have attended one rally too many, or had their identity compromised to government police while posting pro-democracy articles to the internet.

    Not that I’d know either way for sure, since that information isn’t available to the public, only to whatever government officials in China released these bodies to Dalian Medical University for preservation, and that’s the crux of the problem.



  8. Lolo    Wed Sep 13, 06:04 PM #  

    I just missed BODIES when I was in Tampa visiting my brother this summer, so I’m psyched it’s coming here.

    Also, I worked at the Virgin Megastore Miami for six years so seeing a bunch of plasticized dead bodies in there will definitely be extra creepy for me. I can’t wait!



  9. harumi    Fri Sep 15, 09:08 AM #  

    This show is better than most of art shows. It is very educational and beautiful. but I wish it’s the other body show done by German’s that was in Chicago…. I heard this one have dead horse and other cool thing.
    But this show is great everyone should go for sure.



  10. erik    Fri Sep 29, 10:12 AM #  

    It’s educational. It’s about time something interesting came to Miami. This city is a joke when it comes to the fine arts.



  11. Tere    Sun Oct 1, 08:39 PM #  

    Went to the exhibit. It was just like being in a science museum – the work is so perfectly done, I almost had a hard time believing they were real bodies.

    It was extremely educational – I felt like I was back in elementary school, when we would have to draw and/or build models of the organs.

    I don’t want to be insensitive to the issue of how the bodies were obtained, but I found nothing sensationalist or exploitative about it. In fact, I wish schools would take students to see this. The narrative the accompanies the displays, as well as brief snippets of info displayed on the walls in large print, give a coprehensive picture of the miracle of the human body.