Making Soap by Orestes de la Paz is about Changing Perceptions of Beauty {Beauty Notes}
A Miami performance artist called Orestes de la Paz decided to turn his liposuccion surgery into an art event entitled Making Soap. As you may have guessed it already, the arts student decided to incorporate his body fat into a formula for making soap, a process which is extremely gross not just because of the overly intimate and ungraded primary matter it utilizes but because of the association of the technique with the perversities of the Nazi regime. As we type, we feel sick to our stomach, but we type on for the sake of information and for remembrance sake ...
de la Paz says that he conducted the project in order to help "change our perceptions of beauty". He should have stressed however that such a practice is not innocent and even infamous in history due to its association with the commodification of Jewish people's bodies in concentration camps. An art project cannot be completely apolitical and ignore that context.
We're sure that people might be offended by "Making Soap" not because it is eccentric but because it connotes of an ideology of human extermination and deshumanization.
It is therefore not just about changing our perceptions of beauty but it must also succeed in changing our perception of history by taking it into account and explaining clearly in what ways this is absolutely not inspired by a perverted ideology which promoted the anihilation of humanity and the industrialization of the human body. In a day and age when human organs are trafficked from poorer countries to richer ones, this is a real issue.
Thanks.
You can watch a video describing the project,
