Dirty, Pretty Trash: Confronting Perceptions through the Aesthetics of the Abject

Abstract

Both abjection and the return of the abject are crucial feedback. We send away what we don’t want, but the forced confrontation of the abject can have a transformative power when we actually perceive what is a part of us and not apart from us. Visual feedback serves as a potential “event” that can let us experience how our behaviors are problematic; in turn, this knowledge can result in potential for change. When the abject appears in the form of art, it becomes enframed for our scopic pleasure and itself becomes an object to observe and reflect upon: abject as object. When it comes to our encounters with the material world of nature and art, both are more than the picturesque or the sublime, but instead embody the cultural connections that we sometimes wish we could ignore and keep safely out of sight or at a distance. This is why confrontations with the aestheticized abject can serve as potential sites for encounter and possibly of transformation. Artist Mark Dion conceives of art as part of this transformation, asserting that one way to encourage care for the more-than-human world is through an “aesthetic sensibility.” It is this sensibility that Dion employs in his work to address environmental concerns. Rather than ruminate on the sublime or pastoral, Dion explores the frequently invisible urban ecologies that the vast majority of people encounter but frequently keep at a distance. Dion’s work explores what happens to trash and the othered animals that inhabit such trashscapes. By framing the aestheticized abject in the gallery, we grant our bodies the opportunity to perceive and not to simply to look away.