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"When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs as you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock, to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind, you draw large and startling figures."

-Flannery O'Connor

Palace of Wonders:  The Visual Vocabulary of the Sideshow

The trickster/showman P.T. Barnum urged his audiences to embrace incredulity and uncertainty as a part of life.  In the mid 19th century people flocked to his American Museum in New York to see his 500,000 curious specimens.  None of his specimens was more curious than the Feejee Mermaid – a spectacular hoax that netted Barnum incredible wealth, and secured his reputation as both showman and salesman.  He claimed to have obtained this “mermaid” from a British gentleman, who had acquired it at great cost from a Japanese fisherman.  The banner outside the museum advertising this display featured a buxom woman with flowing golden hair against a background of churning waves – the classic mermaid image.  After paying regular museum admission, visitors had to pay a special fee to get a glimpse of this “missing link between humans and fish.” Upon entering, the visitors quickly realized they “had been had.”  The Feejee Mermaid was a composite of the top half of a monkey skeleton badly grafted onto the tail of a large fish.  The Feejee Mermaid went on tour throughout the United States after just a few months in New York.  In January of 1843, Barnum’s Feejee arrived in Charleston, SC.  Residents here were apparently appalled by this “incarnation of evil,” and sent it packing.

Well, the FeeJee Mermaid is back in Charleston, along with a host of other assorted sideshow oddities.  This gathering of artists represents a culmination of my personal interest in the history of the sideshow and its fascinating cast of characters. The thirteen artists of Alive Inside are also enchanted by the rich visual culture that surrounds the sideshow.  The most obvious example is the banner, but other artists have taken cues from the clothing, staging, and huckstering of these shows.  If the point of the sideshow is to part visitors from their money, then it stands to reason that the level of sophistication needs to be very high. In a real sense, the advent of sideshow (and circus) art ushered in the age of modern advertising.  What you see is not what you get, and that’s exactly the point.

This exhibition is intended to plumb the after-effects and visual residue of the sideshow as interpreted by a group of contemporary artists.  While the 10 in-1 is no longer a common attraction, its legacy lives on in the work of these artists who use the historic sideshow as muse or point of departure.  Humans share a universal and insatiable need to want to learn more about the lives of people we perceive to be different from ourselves.  In his classic book Freaks, cultural critic Leslie Fiedler posits that we are fascinated with the people of the sideshow because they represent our “shadow selves.” The idea that we could be spectators to some aspect of our own personality on stage is a compelling reason to step up to witness what is Alive Inside.

~ Mark Sloan