The exhibition The incomplete Child (Danish “Det uperfekte barn”) showed the deviant body and evoked both fascination and horror. It told the story of children with inborn physical deformities from the perspective of history, art, science and society.

In this paper, I describe the exhibition and our intentions. I then investigate how different representations of deformed bodies and disabled people affected the audience and how the different displays acted as an interconnected whole. The paper will draw on responses from secondary school students, whom we invited to comment on the exhibition.

The exhibition
The incomplete Child was held at The Steno Museum in Aarhus from September 2008 to February 2009. It complemented another exhibition called Egg (2007- ) that reflects upon technology and human reproduction by telling the story of abortion, contraception, artificial insemination and cloning. Another debated reproductive technology, prenatal diagnostics, threatens a minority of people with inborn physical deformities in our society. Thus, our purpose with the exhibition The incomplete Child was to investigate the deviant body in its own right, place it in the lime-light, and reflect upon the double role of technology. On the one hand, modern aids for handicapped, e.g. elevators, transportation and communicative tools, have given people with a physical handicap much more independence and opportunities of self-expression. On the other hand, prenatal diagnostics threatens this minority, because parents can choose not to have them.

At the level of exhibition making, we aim at using different kinds of objects and media in our exhibitions. In The incomplete Child we displayed real foetuses, sculptures, objects, art photos and films. Visitors could test the latest things in disability aids, e.g. an eye-controlled computer, drive a high-quality wheelchair in the foyer, and were asked about their opinion on a case of selective abortion.

In the centre of the exhibition, the visitors encountered Heidi Guthmann Birck’s sculptures of deformed foetuses and newborn babies that showed a number of known deformities from a cleft palate to more extensive congenital malformations. The sculptures were naturalistic representations of real foetuses, although not mere copies. In some sculptures the bodily features had been remodeled and aestheticized, e.g. the posture of the foetus, its facial expression, the position of the arms and legs. The sculptures were made out of burnt clay and placed like butterflies on a metal bar.

In a circle around the sculptures, the exhibition gave a broad picture of inborn physical deformities arranged around four themes: “Wondrous Explanations” investigated the parallels between inborn physical deformities and mythological figures like Cyclops and mermaids; “From Isolation to Integration” told the history of handicapped people in modern society and the development of disability aids; “Six Important Weeks” treated the recent history of inborn deformities focusing on Thalidomide, alcohol and the discovery of the vulnerability of the foetus in early pregnancy; and finally, “To choose or not to choose” explored on the one hand, the choices of nowadays parents confronted with an increasing number of detectable foetal defects, and voiced on the other hand, the critique of prenatal screening programmes by The National Association for Down Syndrome in Denmark.

In addition, an adjacent film room presented personal accounts of disabled people and their feelings, wishes and points of view in relation to themselves and society. The visitors met “Ulrich”, who is enthusiastic about mountain climbing and dreams about being the first handicapped to climb Mount Everest, and “Karsten”, who despite being born with no arms performed several of his duties as a director of an institution for disabled with his feet. People with severe spasticity and chondrodysplasia were also depicted.

The disgust and beauty of human deformity
None of the school students were unmoved by the exhibition as a whole and the vast majority found it “frightening”, “repellent” as well as “interesting”, “good” and “beautiful”. The feeling of ambivalence was a recurrent characteristic, here expressed by a girl of seventeen: “I think it was an amazing exhibition. It was very beautiful in some way, but also very repellent.”

In a quiet corner of the exhibition two real human foetuses in alcohol were displayed. One was both a Cyclops and a mermaid syndrome, the other a Janus head. Although the foetuses comprised a minor part of the exhibition, they evoked strong and, in a few cases, negative visitor responses. One girl commented that is was unethical to exhibit real foetuses, as “everybody deserves a dignified dead or funeral”. Despite these frequent feelings of disgust, several students responded that the foetuses nevertheless deserved to be in the exhibition, because they represented the real world and thereby made the exhibition more “trustworthy”.
The teenagers were also moved by the sculptures that were frightening as well as fascinating, although explicit negative responses were absent. Instead, the sculptures evoked sympathy expressed as sorrow or anguish: “If I saw a newborn with the deformities seen in the sculptures, I would begin to cry, I think. I am so sorry for these babies.” In spite of the strong feelings, the sculptures invited the students to investigate these representations of the human body and interpret them primarily as illustrations of human deformity.

The sculptures were also valued as pieces of art and “beautiful” craftsmanship. One girl explained that “In the way you display these figures, they all become children that you could love. They are beautiful, every one of them, in their deformity”.

The third element of the exhibition that evoked strong responses was the film room. The students were generally impressed by the personal lives of people with severe handicap presented in the film room. “It was cool to see that they could live a normal life despite of their deformities and that they fought so much for what they wanted”, as one girl responded. The responses revealed that several teenagers did not know that people with severe handicap could have a good life and manage to live a normal life in many ways.

Personal meaning making and interconnected exhibits
It is characteristic that the sculptures, foetuses and films attracted the visitors in different ways. Each of the displays was singled out as the favorite element of the exhibition. Some enjoyed the films, others were fascinated by the reality of the authentic foetuses and others again were caught by the tangibility of the sculptures.

It is also characteristic that the different elements of the exhibition acted as an interrelated whole. The authentic foetuses underlined that the sculptures were not only “product of the imagination of an artist”. The personal stories from the films influenced how the students reflected upon reproductive technologies, e.g. the choice between bringing up children with severe handicaps and having an abortion, or the striving for perfection among nowadays parents who ought to “think twice before they choose to have an abortion of a child because of insignificant deformities”, as one boy responded.

Finally, when asked if the exhibition had changed their idea of handicapped people, a smaller number of the students responded positively. One girl replied that the exhibition had “changed my view on handicapped and I will be careful about what I think and say about them without knowing them”.

Conclusion
None of the teenagers were unmoved by the exhibition and its different displays that affected the visitors individually. One of the lessons learned was that a variety of displays secured a good museum experience for the audience and gave rise to a multitude of reflections upon human deformity, the life as a handicapped and the dilemmas of prenatal diagnostics.

Art, here in the form of sculptures, obviously seduced one part of the visitors to investigate an area of life that is secret, difficult to access and associated with taboos. In this respect, Guthmann Birck’s wish to expose the beauty of human deformity succeeded.

Finally, the visitor study also points towards the interconnectedness of the exhibits. The different displays acted as complementary elements, for example when the foetuses and personal stories about disabled people supported the naturalistic dimension of the sculptures and reconnected art to the “real” world.

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