The Body Electric

Walker Art Center

Minneapolis | Minnesota | USA

Mar 30, 2019 - Jul 21, 2019

In an age dominated by digital technology, The Body Electric explores themes of the real and virtual, the organic and artificial, moving from the physical world to the screen and back again. Today, computer and phone screens are often the primary places of encountering new information, effectively blurring the boundary between three-dimensional space and the two-dimensional image. The exhibition presents work by an international and intergenerational group of artists who examine ways that photographic, televisual, and digital media change our perceptions of the human body and everyday life.

With pieces ranging from the 1960s to today, The Body Electric brings together artists such as Trisha Baga, Nam June Paik, and Shigeko Kubota, whose work across performance, sculpture, and moving image conflates the physical world and its life on screen. For some artists, including Martine Syms, Andrea Crespo, and Lynn Hershman Leeson, the lens of the camera creates a space to rethink the representation of sociopolitical identities and to question the structures that govern our understanding of race, gender, and sexuality. For others, such as Mark Leckey, Pierre Huyghe, and Bruce Nauman, technology offers opportunities to consider the malleable, fragmented, and impossible body.

Charting the embrace and manipulation of technology across varying generations, The Body Electric examines how the screen has increasingly shifted ways that we picture ourselves and understand our place in the world.