The Cal State Long Beach University Art Museum presents Un-figuring the Body, an exhibit challenging cultural conventions placed upon the human body through photographic and video displays of three artists disfiguring, recreating, costuming and experimenting on their bodies, from Nov. 13 to Dec. 14.
“The artists are attempting to undo the conventions that have been placed on the body by such cultural structures as entertainment, the media, medicine and law,” said Nicole Urquidi, curator and organizer of Un-figuring the Body.
The exhibit’s curator said the focus is on the body’s lack of limits and boundaries. The works of Skip Arnold, Dawn Kasper and Johanna Went display this in their not being plainly sculpted or put together, but rather disfigured, refigured and recreated by their own artistic experimentation.
“The actions of these artists are quite extreme and oftentimes go against our natural inclination towards self-preservation,” Urquidi said.
The purpose of the show is to use bodies as tools to deconstruct their boundaries and to comprehend their internal experience communicated to both the viewer and the artist, according to Urquidi.
Among the art pieces and videos include footage of Arnold refiguring his body by confining himself naked in a custom-built acrylic cube for over 50 hours over a course of 11 days to challenge boundaries of space and offer his body as an object of display.
One video includes Kasper performing Need for Self, a series of four actions that investigated her body as an object through taping, costuming, gluing and tattooing her own body.
Kasper branded the word “truth” on her bicep to express her pain as a readable passage for the viewers, and bounded her body head-to-toe with tape and glue in an interpretation of the physical and emotional sensations of the body.
While viewers may be shocked by the graphic nature of some of the work, the exhibit’s creators hope anyone can walk away understanding the sense of urgency being enacted in these practices, according to Urquidi.
Other art pieces showed handmade costumes by Went, whose various designs from her most recent video performance consisted of a 50-pound geisha costume with disjointed doll parts and a glittering globe on its head, along with vivid costumes exaggerated with an assorted disarray of objects.
“We hope that the exhibit gives viewers the chance to enter into the practices of these three Los Angeles-based artists who all use their bodies in particular ways — ways that question the difference between the body as it is experienced and the body as it is represented,” Urquidi said.
In addition to the images, video documentations and objects displayed, viewers can see live performances by Kasper on Nov. 18 at the UAM gallery and Dec. 10 at the University Theater.
Un-figuring the Body is sponsored by the CSULB Art Department, College of the Arts and was organized by Megan Hoetger, Stacie Martinez and Urquidi, who are museum studies graduate students and CSULB professors.