Touch Me Not: Aparicio, Benlloch, Export, Fábregas, Perach, Oppenheim

About

Noli Me Tangere is a famous scene from the Gospel of John where the newly-risen Christ and Mary Magdalene are reunited. In the passage, John tells of how after visiting Jesus’ tomb only to find it defiled and missing the body of Christ, the distraught Mary Magdalene finds herself encountered by a stranger who reveals to be Christ himself, resurrected in flesh and blood. Though as she instinctively reaches out to touch him, Jesus utters the undying words, noli me tangere nondum enim ascendi ad Patrem meum – Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. 

Even though Mary Magdalene wanted to touch and feel that flesh – lifeless only three days prior – she was not allowed to, and despite all its subtlety, its innocuity, this act of care would have taken Jesus from the heavenly and casted him back down to our mortal plane. It seems like a deja-vu to think about Jesus’ words now in the midst of a global pandemic where our bodies have transformed into harbingers of disease, and the simple act of touching can have impossible consequences. Any show of public affection is now treated with suspicion and reproach in this new COVID reality, relegated to that of infection rather than pleasure. Like Jesus we have become untouchable, and everyone has been rendered divine.

In his essay, Noli me tangere, On the Raising of the Body, the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy discusses the importance of touch within Western civilization. Going beyond the story of the Resurrection, this phrase, now become everyday, says something important about the act of touching in general. Nancy points to the notion that stopping one another from touching, it only serves to make our desire for human contact all the greater, all the more important. And so the frustration that we now feel when we are not allowed to touch our loved ones mirrors that of Mary Magdalene, and the assumed wisdom that our bodies are sanctuaries that must be protected bears a striking resemblance to Jesus’ desire to be left untouched.

This interplay between empathy and frustration is primordial in its nature, but it seems only now are we returning to its origin. Despite the anguish that we have all faced over the past 12 months it does provide an opportunity to discuss the limits of our own body, and how throughout history it has existed as a crucible for conflict, and a threat to be controlled.

From Mary Magdalene’s time and probably long before, the body, its limits and its desires have always been intrinsically linked to politics. The idea that the human body could be broken down to simple binary taxonomies is what the eminent philosopher Paul B. Preciado labelled `anatomical fictions´. Highlighting the problems that arise from defining the body within the strict confines of a binary system, Preciado reveals how this has led to radical ways of understanding sexuality being marginalised by an establishment unwilling to make room and treating sexuality as an opportunity for further division and classification, rather than a space for creativity and expression.

This show takes this passage from the gospel as a trigger to discuss the idea of the body as a battleground through the artists´ works. The show brings together contemporary ways of understanding desire, allowing creativity and artistic practice to go beyond the limits of the human body while giving birth to revolutionary ideas capable of penetrating the cracks of an outdated and exhausted system.