Imagine a large exhibition space somewhere in a large North American, European or South-East Asian city. Throngs of people are queuing at the entrance, while inside others walk around in amused horror in the modern equivalent of a nineteenth-century ‘freak show’. Welcome to ‘Body Worlds’, the controversial exhibition staged under the auspices of the German doctor Gunther von Hagens. Inside the exhibition space, the human form is on display in all its glory, not in the shape of intricate plastic models, but the real thing. According to the official documentation, the exhibitions are staged to demystify human anatomy in a drive to educate the public about how to take care of their bodies. In order to achieve this, real bodies and body parts are displayed in a series of striking poses illuminating the workings of muscles, bones, organs and displaying their pathologies. Caught in perpetual stasis effected by a process called ‘plastination’, death is made visible in a tasteful objectification of the human cadaver, acting as a contemporary memento mori (one of the exhibits for example displays the effect of heavy smoking on the lungs) but without the accompanying smells and sights so repulsive to the modern human senses and without the danger of contamination, fear of which is generally triggered upon contact with decomposing matter.

Paradoxically, by displaying a static and sanitised death, the Body Worlds exhibitions subconsciously subscribe to a wider trend within modern society to deny the effects of ageing and dying (the exhibits of whole cadavers tend to underscore the athletic and vigorous aspects of living).