In an age dominated by digital technology, The Body Electric explores themes of the real and virtual, the organic and artificial, moving nimbly from the physical world to the screen and back again. Looking across the past 50 years, the exhibition presents works by an intergenerational and international group of artists who have seized upon the screen as a place to rethink the body and identity, with a particular emphasis on questions of gender, sexuality, class, and race.
Video cameras record private moments and public spectacles, photographs capture alternate personas, and digital avatars simulate human behavior. Together, they reveal ways that technology changes our collective understanding of the body, everyday life, and sense of self. Works in the exhibition—from the inviting and familiar to the provocative and unsettling—question ways that photographic, televisual, and digital media affect our perceptions of the human body and everyday life.
The Thoma Foundation is proud to loan a digital artwork by Lynn Hershman Leeson to The Body Electric and support it with a grant.
Tour schedule:
- Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (March 30 – July 21, 2019)
- Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA (September 6, 2019 – February 23, 2020)
- Museum of Art and Design, Miami Date College, Miami, FL (November 5, 2020 – May 30, 2021)
Installation view of The Body Electric at Walker Art Center, 2019. Photo by Bobby Rogers.