Ines Doujak

Ghost Population, 2016–ongoing
collages made from historical prints from early 20th century botanical wall charts and medical books, dimensions variable
courtesy of the artist

In the ongoing collage series Ghost Population Doujak considers the monstrous and tender, often untraceable relationships between humans, bacteria, plants, animals, and viruses. Her assemblages materialise twisted and often fleeting interactions through wild and unexpected combinations of materials. In one collage, an illustrated virus blossoms from a young boy’s head, in another a snail transforms into a bacterium. Drawing source material from 20th century historical prints, including medical atlases of skin diseases, Doujak combines the body parts of human and non-human kin with their natural and built environments, thus making visible often unacknowledged interconnections. Through this process, which she began well before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Doujak hones in on the fragmentary origins of pandemics throughout history and links them to the extractive global economy. After all, viruses prove time and time again that they spread most across routes of trade and ecological devastation. These recurrent patterns of microbiological and environment crisis resulting from economic exchange lay bare the failures of globalisation and late capitalism.

The realities of commerce are pervasive and infect the sick body with symbolism, loading it with blame-laying metaphors for “in productivity” and class violence. The “contaminated others” depicted in the Ghost Population collages push back at the systems of classification that draw strict boundaries between sickness and health, showing us that anybody can quickly become sick or diseased. Doujak’s hybrid beings testify to the ubiquity of contamination and the porosity of all forms of life. Disease, Ghost Population reminds us, is a radical prompt.

Mummy Mask with Wig
probably Late Intermediate Period, approx. 1000–1450 CE, Chancay, present day Peru
wood, human hair, alpaca, wool, cotton; acquired in Cuzco, 1979
private collection, loan to the archive, 30,5 x 20,3 x 4,8 cm

The mummy mask was often painted in red, representing the face of a deceased person, who was wrapped in many layers of textile and resulting in a bulky bundle. Its wrappings are likely the textile scraps of Chancay culture. There are 5000 known burial sites in the coastal valleys, and many have been looted for the international antiquities market. An under-resourced Peruvian state, corruption, and the lax attitude of customs control in the rich world beyond have made this possible. Then there are the by-products, ethical judgments of which require caution. Fragments are usually discarded by the grave robbers, and the women of local impoverished communities re-use such scraps both for mummy mask layers and to make imitation pre-Colombian dolls with authentic materials. Even though these sell for just a few dollars in Lima they represent a significant source of local income and also create a real link between the area’s past – its sophisticated textile culture – and the present in which its people survive, in part, by using its leftovers.

Until 1925, a common shade of brown was made from the flesh of Egyptian mummies, both human and feline. Even the mummies of French kings dug up from Saint-Denis in Paris were used. The mummy was first used as a medicinal substance as early as 1300, and the practice came to an end only in the early 20th century, when the supply of available mummy remains was finally exhausted. Virtually all of the pigments that were known to painters from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance were also medicines, including lead white, minium, vermilion, chalk, orpiment, sepia, ultramarine … and mummy. These medicines were supplied by apothecaries, who were also the main sources of painting supplies. Eventually, in 1712, an artist supply shop was opened in Paris called À la Momie. But today mummy brown is no longer available anywhere. Geoffrey Roberson-Park, Managing Director of London’s venerable C. Roberson colour makers, regretfully admitted in 1964 that the firm had run out of mummies. “We might have a few odd limbs lying around somewhere,” he apologised, “but not enough to make any more paint.”

Ghost Population, 2016–ongoing, collage, 85 x 110 cm, courtesy of the artist