Your body is not itself. Nor, I should add, is mine. It is under siege from the pharmaceutical, aerobic, dietetic, liposuctive, calorie-controlled, cybernetic world of postmodernism....The body is at once the final point of resistance to the global imperatives of postmodernism and the first to be affected by them.
—Nicholas Mirzoeff


The body is not only a physical structure. It is where our psychological and spiritual selves reside. Artists have explored the body since ancient times. Representational figurative work, however, is not enough to describe the complexities of the twenty-first century body. The Body Show presents contemporary artists who engage the body as both subject and object, pushing its boundaries, manipulating its appearance, and redefining its structures to understand our postmodern existences. Working in a variety of mediums—from sculpture to photography to digital media, drawing, and embroidery—they bring various perspectives to themes such as identity, mortality, and fragility to create a survey of the body as represented in art today.


Curated by Alex Ben-Abba, MFA Glass, 2011

and Beth Weaver, Graphic Design, 2012


Friday, April 1, 2011

Iliahi Anthony, MFA Furniture 2012

Iliahi Anthony creates a series of wooden hair combs and adornments which celebrate beautifying rituals. Using traditional Hawaiian lashing and knotting techniques Anthony questions the role of unnatural materials in creating our identity.

Boyle, MFA Digital + Media 2011

Derek Paul Boyle uses his body to discuss his state of mind and to express inner contradictions. In Fancy Clown Boyle uses video to construct an implied narrative with a still body erratically struggling against its bindings.

Mimi Cabell, MFA Photography 2011

Mimi Cabell’s body in the piece I love you is present through her voice. Cabell uses repetition as a path to understanding. The sound is flowing through her body while she is asking for the meaning of the overly-used sentence “I love you”.

Leslie Dorcus, BFA Printmaking 2011

With her embroideries Leslie Dorcus closely examines the fragility of the human body, blurring the line between interior and exterior anatomy. By using embroidery to reference dissection she juxtaposes the grotesque, the vulnerable, and the beautiful.

Emilia Edwards, MFA Printmaking 2011

Emilia Edwards re-creates anatomical drawing in a new context with Pulse. By creating a massive scale shift and incorporating cartoon elements Edwards transcends the traditional history attached to the source imagery and emphasizes the autonomy of the bodily forms.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Crystal Ellis,MFA Sculpture 2011

Within Crystal Ellis's piece Self-Reflected the viewer become the viewed. Object and person, image and gaze, self and other are no longer separate. Ellis connects the body and mind using the physical image of human eyes to comment on the idea of self-knowledge.

Hannah Kirkpatrick, BFA Glass 2011

Hannah Kirkpatrick uses her own body to create a set of rulers.
In doing so she creates a new measuring system that redefines both her surrounding and the size of her body. By measuring and inscribing every unit of her rulers she questions our need to measure and define existing structures.

Jiyun (Alex) Lee, BFA Graphic Design 2013

Jiyun Lee uses tools of identity—her own face and hair—to construct the letters of the English alphabet. Lee takes a communication system created with symbols and uses the human form to interpret it. The viewer understands the system and the personal identity together as one.

Greg Nemes, MArch Architecture 2012

Greg Nemes creates a fantasy world where impossible bodies express universal emotions. He examines how advancing technology changes our physical existence but our struggle with fragility and fear remains the same.

O'Brian, BFA Glass 2012

In Drip, Cooper O’Brian is using his body to create a visceral sound. The sound accompanies a beautiful image to express an ancient comparison of the body to the vessel. O’Brian's use of digital media recontextualizes the body as a vessel in contemporary setting.

Lauren Pakradooni, MFA Printmaking 2011

Lauren Pakradooni portrays her human subjects using only the feature of their hair. The artist explores how this grotesque feature is used as a symbol to create identity and status in our culture and many others.

Ben Peterson, MFA Ceramics 2011

Ben Peterson references classical greek statuary to comment on our idealization of the male figure. By pairing idealized forms with garish imagery and altered anatomy he questions our definition of masculinity.

Mark Rice, MFA Printmaking 2011

Mark Rice’s Ear Story combines illustration and text to create a narrative where the ear begins to represent the whole body. When experiencing the piece the viewer takes the author's place, focusing his or her attention onto this audio sensitive area and questioning the location of the event in time and space.

Duhirwe Rushemeza, MFA Printmaking 2011

Duhirwe Rushemeza ties her personal connection to Africa into her work. Putting herself in the place of a Himba tribe woman, Rushemeza is using her body to mark an urban concert platform. Using a hybrid paint; a combination of traditional and contemporary materials, Rushemeza brings a third would presence into the first world gallery space.

Liesl Schubel, BFA Glass 2012

Liesl Schubel compares the physical vessel of our body with its capacity to contain thoughts and emotions. Her piece explores what it means to hold them in or shut them out and our ability to control the quantity.

Alison Schwartz, BFA Sculpture 2011

Alison Schwartz examines the nature of systems within the body. The repetitive process of creating Constellation mirrors the repetitive action of the circulatory system and emphasizes how a physical system will eventually tire and break down.

Catherine Siller, MFA Digital & Media 2012

Catherine Siller examines our relationship with the virtual and the real with Attenuated Processes, Vestigial Parts. Siller displays an object in action captured by a digital process and compares it to the physically present but inanimate object, questioning whether technology has redefined our experience of the "real".

Rachel Stern, BFA Photography 2011

Rachel Stern's series is about the truth of experience in the visceral context of the medical practice. With Blindness and Other Medical Disasters she examines the painful task of putting back together the human body.

Katie Stone, BFA Glass 2012

Katie Stone’s mirrored glass piece, translates a poetic will to capture the infinity in the small, personal space of her hands. Stone takes a part in a tradition of cast body sculptures, but she flips it around, the cast is closed on itself and therefor alludes to the wide philosophical idea of the infinity.

Phoebe Stubbs, MFA Glass 2011

Phoebe Stubbs uses storytelling and writing to express visual movement in space. Stubbs uses the tradition of storytelling but offers a new way to present and document performance.

Beth Suellentrop, MFA Ceramics 2011

Like psychological morphology Beth Suellentrop projects her unconscious onto ceramic material. She creates large ceramic body-like forms, allowing the heavy clay to lump on itself while a constructed arc pulls the composition upwards.

Laura Swanson, MFA Digital Media 2011

With SkinShirt Laura Swanson confronts the viewer with images referencing traditional portraiture in a non-traditional context. The comparison of bodies large and small, clothed and exposed, open and closed highlights how we perceive our own identity.

Trower, Maddy BFA Illustration 2013

With Fragment 7 Maddy Trower questions the enormous value placed on social success by emphasizing the physical reality of our existence.

Jessica Tsai, BFA Sculpture 2011

Jessica Tsai creates an imaginary reality of musculature lying underneath skin with Meat 1. The fantastical creature straddles the line between live and dead flesh, fantastical and real body.

Mariah Tuttle, MFA Jewelry 2011

Mariah Tuttle presents the viewer with a series of photos projected onto the wall where a large, unconventional silicon necklace is displayed. Although the necklace remains still, the image changes, presenting the viewer with a variety of people wearing the same adornment. Tuttle comments on gender fixations and the role of adornment in Western culture.