The wax sculptures of the Ghent-born artist Berlinde de Bruyckere ask the viewer a question rooted in ethics: What does a subject need to lack in order to be considered a soulless object? They resemble the byproducts of a morgue, a slaughterhouse, or a taxidermist’s table, all of which are thematically linked as platforms of industrialized death. With the wax mimicking skin, muscle, tissue, and hair with astounding accuracy, each human or animal body produces a visceral sense of fear and repulsion that quickly collapses into tenderness and compassion. Like precious, abandoned monuments, they are lain within glass cases or seated on platforms to separate them spatially and mentally from the viewer. They are often missing limbs, heads, or facial features, which further complicates our understandings of their subjectivity in death—but still we find it. For de Bruyckere and her works, consciousness exists throughout the body. “The figure as a whole is a mental state,” she writes. “The presence or absence of a head is irrelevant.”

Images © Berlinde de Bruyckere