Almost from birth, human beings are taught to base our perceptions on what we see on the outside of each other. We hold onto ridiculous assertions of how different we are from everyone else based on our hair, skin, irises, and appendages. Our parents say, “she has your nose!” but they don’t say “he’s got my pancreas!” although both are equally true.
If we were all flipped inside out tomorrow — like, say earth gets sucked into a black hole — we’d all look the same. A mess of gooey, glistening, red; entrails and muscles, brains and livers, bones and bile. That’s why I love the gore art that Thon makes. They take the external aesthetic of punk — a look that takes physical and emotional effort to appear different from general society — and flips it with a glimpse of what’s inside. Guts, teeth, tongues, entrails, muscle, and blood vessels are all on full display. Thon makes gore cute and horrifying at the same time.
If we all had x-ray vision and saw the internal workings of each other’s bodies rather than the external trappings, do you think the world would be a different place?
