Buenos Aires – I’m not sure why the idea of going to the gallery showing of Cuerpos Pintados seemed like a good idea at the time. But it did. So I found myself late yesterday in a couple of adjoining tents off the side of the city’s exposition center, tucked away behind, well, pretty much everything. It was not exactly being shown in an easy locale to get to. But I trudged my way there, having been led to expect a variety of art painted on human bodies, live and on display. It seemed intriguing.

Instead what I found were two tents filled with oversized photo prints dedicated to the human body as art form. There were certainly photos of human bodies that had been painted – some in various designs or with an array of themes that were created just for the exhibition, some were simply photographs of “native” body painting from different parts of the globe. There were also just plain photos of the human body – mostly examples of the human body in various states of decline – several series of photos of the elderly, nude, were included, as was a series of photos of ancient mummified children from Peru. There were two adjoining tents at either end of the exhibit displaying films related to the exhibition and the process of putting it together. Although photography wasn’t permitted in the exhibit, I managed to snap off one surreptitiously to show some of the contrasting work. The link above will take you to more of what the exhibit was about, should you care to.

The display on entering the exhibit is a series of giant photographs of faces and body parts painted on butt cheeks. That pretty much sums it all up for me.