Fragmentary Excess: Body, Text, Receptacle Main Menu

Three-Dimensional Bodies

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“Quae facies, qui vultus viro?”
“What sort’s the man’s face, and what his coun-tenance?”
               -Lucilius, Fragment 36

These disembodied heads come to us from different contexts, times, and locales but in their fragmented forms, they all beg the same question: what happened to their vanished bodies, or perhaps, as Lucillius asked, what was the person’s overall countenance? 

 
The rich details ascribed to a face inspire the modern viewer to construct a narrative, perhaps in ways inappropriate to its original conception. The rendering of a wreath, a veil, or a comedic grimace begins to imply the absent context that an intact figure would supply, while at the same time denying specificity. Simultaneously divorced from and connected to their historical contexts, these fragments remind us of the ever-present lacunae in our knowledge of the ancient world, and inspire infinite possibilities of narrative and identity to be generated. 
 

 


Hellenistic Terracotta Head, 3rd century BCE
by BMCexhibition
on Sketchfab

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