Meat and Meaning

In Linus Borgo’s Renaissance-influenced paintings, trans, disabled experiences—especially his own—offer a unique scalpel with which to examine the world. Often, they depict his interactions with the medical system; other times, they use myths and fairytales to indicate his identifications across species. “Meat and Meaning” is connected to Borgo’s painting “Hepatoscopy,” also in the Leslie-Lohman Museum collection. In that work, a deceased pig lies on these same blue sheets, its entrails visible through a rectangle cut out of its skin. The flap of skin, nearly identical to that on the bottom left of “Meat and Meaning,” lies next to it. Borgo has discussed his fascination with the fact that doctors have seen inside his body, a feeling that echoes broader anxieties among many transsexuals about their visibility as “objects” of medical knowledge. The bloodied surgical tools and detached slabs of flesh crystallize that fear, while the title similarly grapples with reduction of trans subjectivities to mere pieces of meat. Yet the lushness of the fabric and the dynamism of Borgo’s composition—again, inspired by Renaissance styles—reimbues the clinical scene with mythic meaning: surgery as a site of rebirth.