A small exhibit, part of the show Between Subject & Object at UCT's Michaelis Galleries, may offer a clue or two about what happens to a tattoo in age and in death.
Anatomy specimen: Tattoo is a piece of preserved skin from the 1970s. Dimly visible is a rough bluish combination of a snake and a woman entwined.
Borrowed from the medical morphology museum in Stellenbosch, it pinpoints the crux of the exhibition.
"The preserved tattoo as object speaks about its now-absent subject," the catalogue entry notes. Life is remembered, if only in an anonymous piece of preserved parchment.
There are more of these curious objects gathered by curators Josephine Higgins, Kathryn Smith and Penny Siopis.
Their show, subtitled Human Remains at the Interface of Art and Science, draws us closer to the bond between art and science as it investigates the space in which the living become the dead.
Far from being morbid, it is offered as a forensic staging.
If the few gruesome objects read as evidence of death, the photographs of the dead suggest an acknowledgement of their previous humanness.
Pieter Hugo's photograph of a man who died of an Aids-related illness memorialises him without sentimentality. Jeffrey Silverstorne's picture of a poisoned couple gives tragedy a human twist. Maeve Berry's images of human cremation are dramatic elegies.
In contrast, the anonymity of death is held up in mortuary records from the early 20th century.
It is not your usual exhibition. It is the first of its kind in South Africa, and it will accompany the Medical Humanities in Africa conference at the end of the month at UCT.
- 'Between Subject & Object: Human Remains at the Interface of Art and Science' is at the UCT Michaelis Galleries until Sunday. Call 021-480-7170
Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package. 
