The Body Electric at the Walker Art Center

The Thoma Foundation is proud to be lead supporter for the Walker Art Center’s exhibition The Body Electric.

“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.”

Deep Contact, a digital video by Lynn Hershman Leeson on loan from the Collection of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation, is on view alongside works by Andrea Crespo, Bruce Nauman, Nam June Paik, and more.

Since the 1970s, Lynn Hershman Leeson has been a major voice of Cyberfeminism, a field of art that critiques the role of technology in the representation of women’s bodies and identities in our digital era. The first artwork to make use of touchscreens, Deep Contact implicates the viewer as an active participant in manipulating characters within the artwork. Emergent personal technologies such as video dating, video games, and the desktop computer in the mid-1980s prompted the artist to respond with Deep Contact, which makes a statement about the ways electronic telecommunications alter the structure, speed and objectives of human desire.

For more information, visit the Walker Art Center’s website.