ABSTRACT
The central image showed a grimacing red devil sitting outside a hut in a desert landscape painted in the traditional style and colours of a Mexican votive retablo. Faites vos Voeux confronted visitors with the extraordinary range of ways in which votive body parts might be given new life and made relevant to the modern world. However, they take on an extra level of significance when they are considered collectively. Contemporary artworks such as those in the Paris exhibition sometimes respond quite explicitly to these modern practices to reenchant or simply to reflect on the anxieties and hopes that these new ways of disassembling the body generate. The cultural factors underlying the 'votive turn' in twentieth- and twenty-first-century art will no doubt become clearer with the passing of time. Over the coming years the debates about votives will hopefully grow even louder and livelier, with many more voices being added to the conversation besides those of historians and contemporary artists.
