Exquisite Corpse, invented by Andre Breton and his associates in the winter of 1925-1926, is a collaborative game that creates surreal sentences through a series of concealed contributions. The game encapsulates the essence of surrealism, encouraging spontaneity and a receptive mindset. Modern artists, like Fiona Banner, continue this tradition by utilizing found materials to create unexpected art forms. Banner’s works reflect this radical creativity, as she fuses words and discarded objects, emphasizing the power of the creative process over traditional completion of a sentence.
Exquisite Corpse gave Breton so much joy because it summed up the essence of the surrealist school of art he was trying to articulate at the time.
Several modern artists are continuing the surrealist tradition by composing with found materials (words, images, objects), drawn from the accidental debris of the everyday, to make the unexpected.
In a film, titled DISARM (Portrait), she has emblazoned words like disarm on arms, obsolete on soles, and delegation on legs.
For Banner, the power of Exquisite Corpse, its radical space, lies not in the finished sentence but in the ongoing creative process.
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