Opening: Friday, December 5th, 6 p.m
A common denominator underpins the selection of works in this exhibition: the notion of the body as a field of political and symbolic action. Through diverse media and from various spatial and temporal origins, the works presented here explore the multiple intersections between gender and performativity, shifting the gaze away from the body as something “given” and approaching identities as processes in motion—open to exploration, disobedience, or reconfiguration.
Thus, in the selected pieces, the body is no longer a subject of representation and instead becomes a medium, a territory, and a language—a space where experiences are not only inscribed but also a field of symbolic, political, and affective struggle.
Several of these works employ video as a medium to construct narratives based on performative actions. The artist’s body in the performance serves as a medium of truth: its exposure, vulnerability, resistance, and even pain cannot be entirely fictionalized.
In this way, the intersections of gender and performativity in contemporary art create a double movement: they denaturalize identities, reveal their constructed nature, and repoliticize the body as a space of action, memory, and desire.
Image: Aurelia Mihai, Living Monuments, 2023