Sudor by Mariela Sancari

Produced by the direct contact of her sweat (‘sudor’) with photosensitive paper, these images trace a journey through sweat that goes from the intimate to the collective, from family history to cultural heritage.

Sweat explores the affective relations between body and sweat, understood not only as a “natural” bodily function but rather as an actant, i. e. endowed with agency. From the first mention in the Bible of the relation between effort and sweat produced by work (the sweat on my brow), to Marx's critical references to the sweating system (a regime of precarious labour); from the ritual function and cosmological significance of sweat to the invention of deodorant as a pathologizing measure, this visual essay takes on multiple perspectives.

Drawing on my experience of living with hyperhidrosis –a condition that causes chronic excessive sweating, which interferes with personal relationships and social activities– I analyse the ways in which sweat, as an agent, shapes the interactions with other bodies and with its environment, to understand the affects and effects of sweat. Sweat is a visual essay that looks at an element of a network that has never been considered as a co–creator in the phenomena of meaning and including it in a more equitable distribution of agency. Can we consider sweating –the image it produces– as a form of resistance to the disciplining of the body into normative confines? How to think with and between sweat?

Sweat combines photographs from my family album and collages along with unique B&W photograms of my sweat –the result of direct contact of photo paper with my sweat and regular development in the darkroom– with texts in different voices.