Jana Sterbak Article Response

In this article written by Jennifer McLerran about Disciplined Subjects and Docile Bodies in the work of Contemporary Artist Jana Sterbak, we look father into her work. Memento more definition reminds us of our own inevitable death and decay. A lot of Sterbaks pieces often require interaction by viewers, causing them to turn from passive reception to active production (537). Her most popular work remains the sculpture, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic. She explores this concept by using meat that literally is decaying and ever changing in the exhibit. She works with extreme notions of the feminine ideal by "the ways in which feminine subjectivity is constructed in and through the multiple discourses on the body that operate in contemporary culture" (537). She evokes fashion as one of the disciplinary forces that produce norms to which women constrain themselves to conform. Her meat dress is opposite of the usual uses of youth, slimness, and vibrant good health, Sterbak rather uses aging, death and decay, to go against the norm. Other examples that demonstrate how Sterbak has employed distinctive materials would be Remote Control I and Remote Control II. These pieces stand for the norm of feminine beauty in 1856, basically making the women very rigid and uncomfortable. She creates cages of sorts that make the women unable to physically move themselves, and are controlled by another person. The final example I will use is the Seduction Couch, a couch made of perforated metal, showing that the wielding power of seduction controls both the attraction and repulsion of the one being seduced.