Ming-Miao Ko

Handle with Care

2021

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Humans invent tools and objects, and these objects can become 'subjects’—leading, provoking, and triggering our wonder and curiosity, even indicating to us how to treat them. By objectifying the human body, such tools become associated with the realm of ritual, consecration, prayer, and magic. The 'handle' in my works means 'to deal with'; it also represents the body can be handled as a tool or as a means from the subject to an object.

 

This series implies and questions the objectification (reification) and dehumanisation under the 'given meanings' of the body by casting and connecting different body parts (male and female genitalia, ear, nipple, umbilicus, …) and objects from nature and artificiality (handle, light bulb, egg, shell, seed, …) referring to gender, sexuality and reproduction. Deriving from the making process is an ongoing dialectical query about the presentation and representation of 'the body'.

 

Nevertheless, it equally embodies a tribute to the life cycle beyond male, female, and androgyny, echoes the complex meaning of the body has to be 'handled carefully'—'handle with care'.