Most striking are Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg's claymation videos, which alternate between cartoony cute takes on the gruesome cycle of life and stomach-churning horror. In Turn into Me (2008), a nude woman dies in a forest. Maggots squirm out of her mouth, then devour her body. A raccoon and a mole burrow into her guts before the skeleton stands up with the critters inside and staggers off through the trees. In Djurberg's 2009 video The Experiment (Cave), a naked lady in a cave finds her limbs have lives of their own when they rip themselves away from her torso, kick her (à la Evil Dead II), tear off her breasts, and pour their milk into her mouth. The grueling humiliation and torture ends only when a boulder falls from the cave ceiling, squashing the renegade arms and legs.

Read Greg Cook's blog at  gregcookland.com/journal.

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ARTICLES BY GREG COOK
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  •   A REALLY BIG SHOW!  |  May 21, 2013
    This showcase of tomorrow's-art-stars-today is both invigorating and overwhelming, with work by 194 students.
  •   CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN  |  May 13, 2013
    What does it mean to be a man? That's the question at the heart of this smart, sumptuous exhibit — one of the best shows in the region this year.
  •   MERRY PRANKSTERS  |  May 07, 2013
    Parked out front of Brown University's gray modernist Granoff Center on a recent sunny morning were one of those 15-foot-tall inflatable rats that unions install in front of businesses they're protesting and a limousine sloppily painted to resemble a yellow and black school bus.
  •   ALTERED IMAGES  |  April 30, 2013
    Among the handsome Washington Street storefronts of AS220's renovated Mercantile Block building, with their neo-old-timey signs, is the residents' entrance to the building. It is against AS220's religion to leave any space empty that can be filled with art. So the lobby is the AS220 Resident Gallery, which occupants of the building take turns filling with their stuff.
  •   IN THE CITY  |  April 23, 2013
    One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Providence art scene is how the city itself has been such a rich subject. A decade ago, the city became a galvanizing topic as artists fought to protect the old mills that served as their homes and studios from demolition — with mixed success. But lately, the community's industrial architecture itself has attracted artists' attention.

 See all articles by: GREG COOK

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