Any Body There?

An essay by Marlene Dumas

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No. 42 • June 2026

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text: Marlene Dumas

What does it mean to be human? That is a question that can keep one awake at night, listening to the throbbing heartbeat of one’s own body. While time ticks away and the mind rambles on… Consciousness locked up in this home of the soul, called The Body.

It is said that to know what is good for you, you should listen to your body. That would be easier if we lived in harmony with those around us. The body can betray us, as when tortured we confess to things we do not believe in, to make the pain stop. Sometimes bodies are broken, but the spirit is not.

We are our bodies and yet we are not. As everyone who has watched someone die knows, a dead body is very different from a body that is alive. We therefore also close the eyes of the deceased, as soon as we can.

Our so-called Western art history books show many bodies. Especially the female nude and the half-naked body of Christ were among the main subjects of interest. The Bible and Ovid’s Metamorphoses inspired endless (often erotic) masterpieces. Somehow we started to believe that appreciating the beauty of art will make us morally better. History has proved us wrong. After the horrors of the Holocaust, painting human beings in Europe seemed impossible. Art can’t heal traumas but can try to help us survive. Performance artists, for example, use their own bodies, rather than representing others.

Asked to think about the body in 2025, I cannot help but mourn the state of the world. Where children are dehumanised into nameless bodies that can be tortured and killed without any remorse. How can we not condemn the ongoing occupation, oppression and destruction of the Palestinian people? Not that this is the only injustice in the world, but at least other atrocities are not denied.

The Jewish American Ben Ferencz (1920-2023) who, at 27 years of age, became the chief prosecutor of one of the Nuremberg trials, saw terrible things during World War II. He lived to the age of 103, always striving to create a more humane world. In 1975 he wrote his first book, Defining International Aggression: The Search for World Peace. He became an advocate for the establishment of an International Criminal Court (established in 2002 in The Hague). In 2006 he suggested that not only Saddam Hussein, but also George Bush should be tried for war crimes.

He embodied the principles that all human beings deserve a life of dignity and rights, free of fear and persecution, that there can be no peace without justice and that no one is beyond accountability. He campaigned tirelessly for Law Not War.

This is an article from See All This #42, summer 2026. Order the edition here.