On Everyone’s Lips; From Pieter Bruegel to Cindy Sherman | In aller Munde
This exhibition In Wolfsburg, Germany is all about the mouth. With over 250 works in the museum galleries and online, ranging from many time periods. Unfortunately, the exhibition is only able to be viewed online at this time due to the pandemic, this is an interesting experience, as you can’t fully take in the work through a screen but more information seems to be available on the works.
The online Exhibition seems to be in sections; The mouth, Around the mouth, show teeth, Toothache and pain, Tooth and Ornament, On the Tongue, Lick and Taste, Throat and Snares, Vampirism and Kiss, Scream and spit, Air and Sounds and Ravages of Time. Whilst this looks like an overly extensive list of sections within the exhibition, the works are categorised beautifully with their titles, almost like a melody and a harmony working together in a song.
“Mouth, lips, tongue, and teeth; speech, pain, and screaming; eating, devouring, spitting, and spewing; lust and passion: The oral cavity is a literally stimulating bodily zone. Not only have science and medicine always been involved in the exploration of the oral cavity, but also art and cultural history, from antiquity to the present.” – On Everyone’s Lips Press Release
The title sections mirror these actions and also lead us on a Journey through the online exhibition, from the mouth and down the throat, but also through time as the works get older and more culturally involved in time towards the end of the exhibition. This seems to work in parallel with one of the pieces in the show by Mona Hatoum, who takes us on a journey down into her oesophagus. Other works include Mithu Sen’s Phantom Pain, questioning the cross over roles of feminine beauty, culture and race by creating a 3D wall mounted sculpture where there are tiny white figures that almost look like teeth, it is a form of storytelling and although very aesthetically different, the piece intertwines with the story telling elements of the other pieces in this show.
The Physical show in Germany takes place in the Kunst Museum. Like any gallery and museum, the space is filled but also has a lot of negative space where the viewers can have space to think and walk around. It is crowded without being chaotic. The colour scheme of the show seems quite unilateral, with fleshy pink tones that sparks the viewers mind towards flesh and the inside of the mouth and red tones that would suggest the more intimate parts of the mouth, the lips. These colours used, bright and bold, likely bring excitement to the viewer and excite new ideas about the work that might not have otherwise been thought of, pieces linking together the puzzle.
In Ravages of Time this piece of text perfectly puts together the importance of the mouth and why it is so interesting to explore;
“The ravages of time gnaw at us for a lifetime. Teeth define our stages of life from the first to the last tooth. The skull and its teeth are the strongest symbol of transience and the main motif of numerous depictions of vanitas - because they outlive us.” – Ravages of Time, On Everyone’s Lips Exhibition
Our Bodies are not often thought of as storytelling objects, but every mark that it obtains, the weathering enamel on our teeth, stretch marks from giving birth, etc. It all tells a unique story and this exhibition impacts its viewers by sharing these stories but instead of speaking from the mouth, it is shown through Art Works throughout the ages.
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