A Bone to Pick: Berlin Exhibition Looks at the Cannibal in Everyone

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Does the potential for cannibalism lie dormant in all of us? According to the new exhibition "All Cannibals?" at Berlin's "me Collector's Room," the answer is yes. In fact, the essence of anthropophagy is not as far from general human consciousness as we'd like to think, it suggests.

Using some 100 historical and contemporary works that range from cult objects and ethnological photographs to videos and installations, organizers say they take both an "uncanny and playful" approach to the uncomfortable topic. Starting with what at first feels like a voyeuristic spectacle of the exotic and perverse, the exhibition manages to force viewers to reconsider whether they might be nearer to flesh-eating tendencies than they'd like to admit.

The exhibition, which features the work of some 40 international artists, is divided both chronologically and thematically, with sections such as "History, Myths & Fairy Tales," "Solidarity of the Flesh," "Goya and His Successors," and "Holy and Secular Cults."

Researchers believe that rituals including the consumption of human flesh went on as late and the 1970s in some places, including a small part of New Guinea. But the word "cannibal" has been used since the 17th century as a blanket term for those considered to be "savage" or "uncivilized." Over the centuries the original ritual meaning of cannibalism has been neglected, while the spirit behind it has been demonized. This in turn made it easier for supposedly civilized Westerners to project cannibalistic undertones onto the "savages" within their own societies.

A Cannibalistic Aftertaste

Many western myths, fairy tales and traditions -- including the Christian practice of Holy Communion -- leave a cannibalistic aftertaste. Meanwhile a number of contemporary books, films and television shows such as "True Blood" and the "Twilight" series, which focus on vampires in particular, are both prompting and reflecting a renewed interest in the concept of eating human flesh.

The exhibition makes the case for understanding the fascination with cannibalism as a seismographic reaction to contemporary developments such as medical innovations that confront the boundaries between two bodies -- organ transplants, genetic manipulations, and gestational surrogacy. Against this background monstrous sexist, racist and consumerist tendencies emerge.

"Behind the cumulative emergence of cannabalist metaphor in contemporary art lies a lack of unity with the body and its return as edible flesh," said the exhibition's curator, Jeanette Zwingenberger.

It sounds serious enough, but the topic also lends itself easily to jokes. Patron of the me Collectors Room and a collector himself, Doctor Thomas Olbricht has taken a fancy to collecting humorous historic postcards about cannibals. Among them is one postcard that portrays clichéd heathens eyeing a skinny Westerner as a "light lunch." Another shows caricatured cannibal cooks paired with the phrase, "We rely on your good taste."

Olbricht himself also jokes about eating flesh. After inviting the press to preview the bloody exhibition last week he smiled sardonically and said that in addition to red wine, there would also be "minced meat" for guests.

"All Cannibals?": me Collectors Room. Berlin, May 29 to August 21.