BODY CARE

Through new technologies and confronted with contemporary crises surrounding us, the understanding of bodies and the bodily experience is exponentially evolving. With Natacha Donzé, Keiken, Ernst Lima and Tabita Rezaire, this group exhibition "BODY CARE" brings together four internationally emerging artistic positions that explore new ways of corporeality. The changes in physical existence revealed in the works testify to a concern for bodies articulated in fluid and fragmentary representations of the body, a new approach to spirituality, and by locating bodies in parallel realities in digital space. Through their multimedia works, the artists pose questions about bodily experience, negotiating aspects of identity, equality, healing, metamorphosis, and connection to technology. Natacha Donzé's large-scale canvas "Ghost gun II" (2022) takes an abstract reference to physicality and immanent structures of danger and violence. The painting shows fields of microorganisms, as if one were looking at cells or a virus under a microscope. A semi-transparent stencil is superimposed over this layer, like a protective shield. However, beyond its protective or life-sustaining function it belongs to so-called ghost guns. These weapons are sold in parts and are thus available for purchase by anyone without proof of skill or permission to possess a gun. In Donzé's work, an ambivalence is achieved in which it remains open whether the weapon serves to protect the bodies or whether a foreshadowing emerges in which the organisms behind become endangered themselves. Keiken's film "Metaverse: We are at the End of Something" (2020) presents a state of transition and transformation. Built inside a gaming engine, Keiken creates a fictional world characterized by social distancing, rapidly advancing technology, growing social inequality and division, opening up a space for reflection of our real present from the perspective of the future. In glass pregnant bellies reminiscent of vessels, humans carry objects that transcend space and time as evidence of culture, consciousness, emotions, and beliefs. Thus, the artist collective Keiken also addresses the permeability of bodies, how external influences affect bodies, and how bodies themselves interact with their environment through sensations and movements. The film was made in collaboration with Ryan Vautier and Sakeema Crook, and is part of Keiken’s ongoing project "Augmented Empathy," which explores the future of augmented bodies and avatars. Tabita Rezaire describes her video sculpture "Peaceful Warrior" (2015) as a decolonial self-care tutorial that calls for radical self-love, for a transformation from an angry warrior into a peaceful warrior. The artist goes on a journey of holistic healing with spiritual and bodily practices in favor of liberation from homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, white supremacy, patriarchy, and the stigmatization of age. Through yoga and twerking, she unleashes her womb power against internalized and institutionalized oppression. Her video "Premium Connect" (2017) also highlights the many connections of history, wisdom, spirituality, and sciences that manifest within bodies. Rezaire presents a study-like network archaeology that juxtaposes spiritual, biological, and neurological connections with digital and technological channels of information, questioning the dissimilarity of body and machine. Ernst Lima developed a new site-specific sound piece for the exhibition in which body fragments or voice fragments are transmitted to the public space through exciters on the window. With "Temporal Tension" (2022), the artist addresses both boundless physical expansion and the directionless speed of temporal processes. Her voice and sounds of her body overlap with technical sounds while she whisperingly recites a poem. Just as Ernst Lima's accompanying depiction of a fluid, dissolving body on the window glass refuses unambiguous attributions, so too does the whispering voice elude unambiguous attribution through speech recognition technologies. At the same time, the whispering voice evokes feelings of closeness and security. Her digital drawings on leather canvases, such as "OVER THE FACE OF THE DEEP" (2022), visually engage with the exploration of an expanded corporeality and its socio-political boundaries. In particular, skin as a physical boundary to the outside world is brought into focus in a double way: skin colors disappear in the abstraction of black and white or through futuristic-surreal coloring, while leather, both as skin or clothing, refers to the protective layer of bodies. The exhibition is curated by Madeleine Freund and supported by Stiftung Federkiel and Bildrecht.