with Fanny Gicquel, Adi Liraz, Zoë Claire Miller, Nelson Morales, Liz Rosenfeld, Aliza Shvarts, Agrina Vllasaliu

An Imagination of Bodily Autonomy is an exhibition project that looks at the way we treat our bodies. The body with which we move through the world determines our perception of the world, how others perceive us and treat us, and which rights are granted or denied to us.

Only 57% of all women worldwide are able to make self-determined decisions about their sexual and reproductive health, according to the United Nations’ annual State of World Population Report of 2022. The body is thus a crucial site into which patriarchal structures are inscribed. However, not only women but also queer, trans, BiPoc, and people with disabilities all know what it means to live in this world with a body that deviates from the purported norm.

The long-standing slogan of feminist movements in the struggle for the right to safe and freely accessible abortion, “My Body, My Choice,” serves as the starting point for a subjective, fragmentary investigation of the concept of bodily autonomy. The exhibition brings together seven artists who have reclaimed their bodies performatively, taking up space in this world and are living bodily self-determination already in the present. Between fragility and resilience, this is not an escape from reality, but a self-confident statement: the artists take what is theirs.

For the duration of their exhibition visit, the audience of Galerie im Saalbau enters an alternative space where they can imagine what it would be like if everyone could decide freely and without restrictions about their bodies.

Curated by Nina Marlene Kraus