In 1972, the West German artist Marianne Wex began a visual survey of gendered body language. She picked up her camera and covertly photographed people in her hometown of Hamburg, observing how men and women were socialized to inhabit space differently. She also rephotographed pictures from advertisements, newspapers, magazines, film, television, and art catalogues, pasting the images onto boards organized into categories like “standing arms,” “sitting legs,” “lying down,” and “possessive holds.” For Wex, “these mostly unconscious actions” were “essential parts of our communication.”
Presenting a robust selection, the exhibition also brings Wex’s watershed feminist project into dialogue with contemporary artists Nona Faustine, Martine Gutierrez, K8 Hardy, Yuki Kihara, Joiri Minaya, Paulina Olowska, and Wendy Red Star. These contemporary practitioners reappraise the relationship of bodies to public space from Black, queer, and 21st-century feminist perspectives. In this context, the notion of “taking back space” resonates as a reclamation of physical territory, historical narratives, and the ability to represent oneself.
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)