Birth sleeves and synapses

A concept popularised by Richard Morgan in his 2002 cyberpunk novel, Altered Carbon — set in a future where consciousness can be transferred between bodies — ‘birth sleeve’ is the body an individual is born with.

Using that ideological framework, Jonathan Armour, currently visiting Kathmandu as a resident artist with Space A, has created a series of artworks.

Transhumanism can be alarming, but I could connect the idea of sleeves to my own ongoing preoccupation with deconditioning as it relates to depth psychology — ‘a therapeutic process of dismantling deeply ingrained, unconscious patterns, limiting beliefs, and automatic behavioural reactions formed by early socialisation, familial upbringing, and cultural conditioning’.

Anyone can benefit from some deconditioning, but queer and/or disabled individuals might find instant resonance with approaches that support transcendence, whether mentally from narrow societal standards or physically from one’s birth sleeve.

Armour uses numerous cameras to scan an individual’s body from multiple angles and creates 3D images on a computer. Guided by conversations with participants, he then opens up the 3D image using software to create flat portraits of their sleeves.

Before coming to Kathmandu, Armour asked to be introduced to any Nepali artist who might also be working with the human body, and he corresponded with Kapil Mani Dixit online for three weeks in order to plan an immersive collaboration during his residency.

Dixit is known for pioneering nude figurative art in Nepal, a genre still considered taboo in this country, but he had never collaborated so closely with another artist.

As an art student in Dallas, he was uninspired by the Texan flatness. Used to drawing landscapes, he was at a loss. Then a professor invited him to his first class in life drawing: ‘the practice of drawing the human figure from direct observation of a live model, often nude, to develop skills in anatomy, proportion, and gesture’.

Armour’s exploration is a departure from this more traditional, representational art practice. Perhaps, being queer himself, he is mindful of the Gaze Theory and seeking to destabilise power dynamics between subject and object.

On one of their trial studio sessions, Armour and Dixit stood on either side of a semi-transparent drafting film hanging vertically. Using each other’s bodies as surfaces, they used oil pastels to trace, creating impressions rather than clear figures.

In an introduction to their upcoming exhibition, they have described that the material “became a membrane, an interface, a skin between two artists, each from very different backgrounds.”

The Body: Anatomy and Neurology, featuring output from their collaboration as well as from a workshop with six other Nepali artists, will open Friday 24 April at Kathmandu Art Gallery.

Armour was keen to work with Nepali artists, and he says drafting film, “became the surface on which the collaboration played out. It was the meeting point … a synaptic metaphor where their neurons connected, communicated and responded to each other”.

“I used to be afraid of colours,” Dixit says, limiting himself to blacks and browns, but he has been expanding his palette while working with Armour.

After his Dallas exposure to life drawing, Dixit began viewing human bodies as landscapes as well. He has becoming more experimental lately. Instead of focusing solely on anatomical representation, Dixit’s recent drawings have been anthropomorphic and even surreal.

Armour’s methods are even more transgressive. In another collaborative session, a male model lay flat on the drafting film itself while the two artists rotated around the body, sketching impressions from six pre-determined spots.

This allowed the artist to focus on specific body parts from a very close distance within a fixed time frame, while working on the same sheet of drafting film. They used a similar methodology with the six Nepal artists.

One might be doubtful of this whole project, since painting has merged with performance in the social media age. But collaboration is centred in this practice, the marks are witnesses and records of exchanges between artists which were ‘competitive, cooperative and conflicting’.

Body landscape

The Body: Anatomy and Neurology

by Jonathan Armour, Kapil Mani Dixit

Opens 24 April, 4PM

Kathmandu Art Gallery