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Votives and Charm Bracelets: Materialising Health-Related Experiences Through ‘Sacred’ Objects

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Wearable Objects and Curative Things

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Fashion and the Body ((PSFB))

Abstract

The concept of a physical artefact acting as an intermediary between the embodied individual and the quasi-divine has historically taken many forms, including charms and tokens worn to ward off evil and ensure good spiritual and physical health. This chapter focuses on the artist Garry Barker’s practice whereby he aims to give material form to people’s psychological relationships with their bodies. Responding to themes that emerge from one-on-one conversations with project participants, Barker has used the making of votives and charms to articulate and materialise people’s health-related narratives. More recently he has been using the charm bracelet as a device for the presentation or exhibition of small sculptures and images that are designed as objects to help mediate between desires to transcend the problems of everyday reality and the need to seek wish fulfilment by channelling more spiritual forces.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ittai Weinryb (ed.), Ex Voto: Votive Giving Across Cultures (New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2016).

  2. 2.

    Garry Barker, ‘Drawing Age’, Drawing: Research, Theory and Practice 5, no. 2 (2020): 351–361; Garry Barker, ‘Is It To Feel Each Limb Grow Stiffer, Is It To Feel The Full Potential Of A Life?’ TRACEY 15, no.1 (2021): 1–17; Garry Barker, ‘In Conversation,’ Shine Magazine, 2022, https://www.shinealight.org.uk/inconversation-garrybarker. Accessed 9 September 2022; Garry Barker, Life Hacks for Limited Futures, 2020 https://lifehacksforlimitedfutures.wordpress.com/author/garrybarker69/. Accessed 9 September 2022.

  3. 3.

    Jade Albert and Kai Hackney, The Charm of Charms (London: Abrams, 2005); Deborah Alun-Jones and John Ayton, Charming: The Magic of Charm Jewelry (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005).

  4. 4.

    Robert Shanafelt, ‘Magic, miracle, and marvels in anthropology’, Ethnos 69, no. 3 (2004): 317–340.

  5. 5.

    Jessica Hughes, ‘Fractured Narratives: Writing the Biography of a Votive Offering’, in Ex Voto: Votive giving across cultures, ed. Ittai Weinryb (New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2016), 23–48.

  6. 6.

    For further information on this process, see Garry Barker, ‘Drawing the Embodied Mind: A Project Report on Research Into Interoception’, PSIAX #5 Estudos e reflexões sobre desenho e imagem 5 (2021): 17–24.

  7. 7.

    Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An introduction to actor-network-theory, Oxford: OUP, 2007.

  8. 8.

    Andy Clark and David Chalmers, ‘The Extended Mind’, analysis 58, no. 1 (1998): 7–19; Mark Johnson, Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason: How Our Bodies Give Rise to Understanding, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2021; Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter, New York: Duke University Press, 2010; Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, New York: Duke University Press, 2007.

  9. 9.

    Beyond Measure? https://beyond-measure.mailchimpsites.com/. Accessed 12 September 2022.

  10. 10.

    http://fineartdrawinglca.blogspot.com/2021/07/paul-klee-and-markov-blankets.html.

  11. 11.

    Michael Kirchhoff, Thomas Parr, Ensor Palacios, Karl Friston, and Julian Kiverstein, ‘The Markov blankets of life: autonomy, active inference and the free energy principle’, Journal of The Royal Society Interface 15 (2018): 20170792.

  12. 12.

    E-J Graham and Garry Barker, ‘Making Votives; Pain and Practice’, The Votives Project, September 15 2020, https://thevotivesproject.org/2020/09/15/making-votives/; accessed 15 September 2022.

  13. 13.

    Weinryb, Ex Voto, 51.

  14. 14.

    Emma-Jayne Graham, ‘Mobility impairment in the sanctuaries of early Roman Italy,’ in Disability in Antiquity, ed. Christian Laes, London and New York: Routledge, 2016, 264–282; 252.

  15. 15.

    On the anti-portrait, see Fiona Johnstone and Kirstie Imber, ‘Introducing the Anti-Portrait’ in Anti-Portraiture: Beyond Likeness and Identity, ed. Fiona Johnstone and Kirstie Imber, London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2020, 1–24.

  16. 16.

    Andrew Wilburn, Materia Magica: the Archaeology of Magic in Roman Egypt, Cyprus, and Spain, Ann Arbour, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2012.

  17. 17.

    Albert Einstein, Born-einstein Letters 1916–1955: Friendship, Politics and Physics in Uncertain Times, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 158.

  18. 18.

    For a materialist framework, see the quantum arguments developed by Karan Barad in Meeting the Universe Halfway; and Graham Harvey on contemporary animism in Animism: Respecting the Living World, New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

  19. 19.

    Garry Barker, artist’s website: https://garrybarkeronline.com/project/votive-cards-as-story-prompts/. Accessed 16 September 2022.

  20. 20.

    Steven Connor, The Book of Skin, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2004, 10; on skin, germs and viruses see Frank O. Nestle, Paola Di Meglio, Jian-Zhong Qin, and Brian J. Nickoloff, ‘Skin immune sentinels in health and disease’, Nature Reviews Immunology 9, no. 10 (2009): 679–691.

  21. 21.

    Harvey, Animism.

  22. 22.

    Sheila Paine, Amulets: a world of secret powers, charms and magic, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2004, 10.

  23. 23.

    Alun-Jones and Ayton, Charming.

  24. 24.

    Garry Barker, ‘Revealing the invisible: The virus is looking at you’, Journal of Visual Political Communication 7, no. 1 (2019): 61–87.

  25. 25.

    Alun-Jones and Ayton, Charming.

  26. 26.

    Jahanzeeb Qurashi, ‘Commodification of Islamic religious tourism: from spiritual to touristic experience,’ International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage 5, no. 1 (2017): 89–104; Prabhjot Kaur, and Ruby Joseph ‘Women And Jewelry-The Traditional and Religious Dimensions of Ornamentation’ Coherence 3 (2012): 39–49; Jiayu Wu, ‘Research on the Application of Chinese Traditional Auspicious Elements in Modern Jewelry Design,’ Frontiers in Humanities and Social Sciences 2, no. 3 (2022): 9–13; Lee Barron, ‘Postmodern theories of celebrity,’ in Routledge Handbook of Celebrity Studies, ed. Anthony Elliott, London and New York: Routledge, 2018; 58–72.

  27. 27.

    Ved Bhatnagar, Shringar-the Ras Raj: A Classical Indian View, New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 2004.

  28. 28.

    Nazim Husain and Mohd Khalid, ‘Aesthetic Significance of Solah Shringar (Sixteen Ornaments) in Unani Medicine’, J. Complement. Altern. Med. Res (2021), 69–81: 75.

  29. 29.

    Ceri Houlbrook, ‘The Love-Lock Charm: Folklore and Fashion’, Tradition Today 1, no. 9 (2020): 23–32.

  30. 30.

    Lisa Feldman Barrett, Karen S. Quigley, Eliza Bliss-Moreau, and Keith R. Aronson, ‘Interoceptive sensitivity and self-reports of emotional experience’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87, no. 5 (2004): 684.

  31. 31.

    Oliver G. Cameron, ‘Interoception: the inside story—a model for psychosomatic processes’, Psychosomatic Medicine 63, no. 5 (2001): 697–710; Dieter Vaitl, ‘Interoception’, Biological psychology 42, no. 1–2 (1996): 1–27; Sahib S. Khalsa and Rachel C. Lapidus, ‘Can interoception improve the pragmatic search for biomarkers in psychiatry?’ Frontiers in psychiatry 7, no. 121 (2016), n.p.

  32. 32.

    On size and scale in relation to human experience see Pasqualini, Isabella, Maria Laura Blefari, Tej Tadi, Andrea Serino, and Olaf Blanke, ‘The architectonic experience of body and space in augmented interiors,’ Frontiers in Psychology 9, no. 375 (2018), n.p.; and Craig, Arthur D. How Do You Feel? Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.

  33. 33.

    Annie Thwaites, ‘A History of Amulets in Ten Objects,’ Science Museum Group Journal, 11 (2019): n.p.

  34. 34.

    Heather Marie Akou, ‘Tetela amulets: Re-interpreting a medical anthropology collection as a fashion benchmark,’ International Journal of Fashion Studies. 6, no. 2 (2019): 163–180.

  35. 35.

    Timothy Morton, All Art is Ecological, London: Penguin, 2021, 59.

  36. 36.

    Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 3.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leeds Arts University, Leeds, UK

    Garry Barker

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  1. Garry Barker
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Leeds Arts University, Leeds, UK

    Dawn Woolley

  2. Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University, Durham, UK

    Fiona Johnstone

  3. School of Design, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

    Ellen Sampson

  4. Leeds Arts University, Leeds, UK

    Paula Chambers

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Barker, G. (2024). Votives and Charm Bracelets: Materialising Health-Related Experiences Through ‘Sacred’ Objects. In: Woolley, D., Johnstone, F., Sampson, E., Chambers, P. (eds) Wearable Objects and Curative Things. Palgrave Studies in Fashion and the Body. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40017-9_12

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