Disposable Bodies

May 4, 2023

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Where are my sisters and comrades?  Where is the beautiful lady without head or legs below her thighs who instead offers a torso nude and smooth red curving into a svelte waist clinched by a lovely but lethal belt of black?  Where is her aesthetic soulmate naked and sensually blue save for elegant feathers and an ominous black vest as she prepares to march?  Where is the intrepid lady in a chic gray and white plaid civilian uniform chastity chained around the waist and guarded across thighs by a grenade hanging in front.  Where are the other Disposable Bodies of Laila Shawa?  I must be the only one left from our group.  There’ll be others of course.  They’ll read about us but there won’t be much left to see.  I want my picture taken today before I march.  I’m resplendent in gems red purple turquoise and white enhanced by bullets belted gold around my neck and waist from which hangs a golden grenade protecting me in a troubled land between river and sea.

 

Sources

Disposable Bodies is a series of mannequin torsos by Laila Shawa.  One of the works appears in Women Defining Women in Contemporary Art of the Middle East and Beyond at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 

George Thomas Clark authored the collection Paint it Blue

 

 

George Thomas Clark

George Thomas Clark is the author of Hitler Here, a biographical novel published in India and the Czech Republic as well as the United States. His commentaries for GeorgeThomasClark.com are read in more than 50 countries a month.

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