The Miami Freedom Tower is hosting Instruments of Torture Through the Ages, an exhibit on loan from the Museo Medieval in Italy. The guillotine on display looks awfully perfect in front of the Spanish Renaissance-style building. Surely, that’s what drew me in—and anyone else with a taste for the macabre.The exhibit, running through August 29, displays roughly 85 objects, which are authentic or carefully executed reproductions of original instruments once common in the dungeon of many a noble or prince.
While the exhibit definitely gives viewers the chills, the weight of the exhibit comes from realizing just how bad it was to be on the wrong end of the law before agencies such as Amnesty International and the United Nations existed. In those days, justice was vernacular. The punishments meted out by a Tuscan duke could be much less or much more bloody than those of his counterpart in Bavaria.
Certain objects on display dispel long-held myths.A chastity belt, for instance, was not something a husband forced his wife to wear if he were going off on crusade. Oftentimes women adopted the use of a chastity belt when traveling, as roadside inns hosted outlaws bent on rape as much as law-abiding citizens.
The masculine version of a chastity device, however, was made to inflict pain, not protect the “pudendum” or “shameful” parts of man.When impure thoughts caused the wearer to get an erection, little spikes would meet the growing member.This was generally a form of self-mortification of the flesh for reasons of piety.
The above device wasn’t necessarily for the homosexual offender only. For in- stance, a beautifully-made stretching device introduced into the mouth, rectum, or other orifice would be twisted to expand, and open up. My friend who came with me said he has seen similar devices for sale on fetish websites—although I think their modern, repurposed intent is to bring about pleasurable, not fatal, pain. To punish homosexuality with death, a large saw—always a ready torture device— was introduced between the legs of a man hung upside down.They would proceed to saw the guilty in half. Some accounts reveal that people would not often die until the saw reached the navel.
One item on display, an Italian rack with spikes, also comes with a description of waterboarding—which is described as being enduring because it is an “economical” form of torture.To get the most out of time with the prisoner, the executioner would pour copious amounts of water into the mouth against the tortured person’s will. In addition to the feeling of drowning, the stomach and abdomen would be beaten, which would cause the person on the receiving end much pain. It seems as if time-tested ideas such as this are still employed by governments to extract information.
A head crusher, would gradually tighten and lower onto the person’s skull.When the device was unscrewed, the cranial cap of the person would be removed. The Nuremberg Maiden, or iron maiden, is also on display. While this torture existed in other parts of Europe, the smiling Nuremberg version, in which the prisoner was placed so that spikes would pierce the flesh and ultimately kill and crush the victim, is the most iconic.This punishment was reserved for severe crimes against the state, or ruler, such as minting coins illegally.
The torture exhibit highlights the fact that these punishments, and tortures, were not meant to be swift.The rack was meant to dislocate shoulders and vertebrae so that the death was agonizing. Other devices were meant to be worn on a long- term basis, such as spiked belts, so that wounds would develop, exposing flesh, so that ultimately gangrene and death would take their course.That is if you were lucky enough to not have flesh-eating worms introduced.
Other devices, such as a heavy, mocking mask made out of metal, were created for women who had spoken in front of or against the men in their lives.These masks chronicle the near-universal domestic slavery in which women existed in past centuries.A dunking or dousing chair punished women who gossiped.The guilty were strapped into the chair and lowered into a body of water several times throughout an entire day, thereby repeating the feeling of drowning. Should we bring this back for Perez Hilton?
The show is really two shows in one.The second part of the exhibit displays methods of torture carried out by the Inquisition, with wax models of the accused in various stages of torture and pain. On a slightly disconcerting note, the wax figures of hairy, medieval Italian men were oddly attractive.
To learn more about the exhibit, visit Miamitorture.com
Faces: 100 Cuban Artists by Carlos Manuel Cardenes Sr. and Jr.
This collection chronicles the diaspora of Cuban artists living in Miami. Rather than mere portraits of the artists in the photographs, Cardenes, Jr. weds the artists to their art. “My approach was to conflate the work and the artist into a single indivisible image; to place creator and creation in the same canvas and, so to speak, put the flesh on the bones of creation.To see the art and the artist as one—that was my vision,” said Cardenes, Jr.
Cardenes, Jr. initially started this project on his own. How- ever, in the middle of scheduling and photographing the artists, he suffered an untimely death. To honor the memory of his son, Cardenes Sr. completed the work.The pictures are moving, eloquently executed studies of a population that is both unique to and a major force behind the life of Miami.
To learn more about this exhib- it, contact the MDC Art Gallery System at (305) 237-7700.
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