"Unbodied parties", by MFA in Photography & Image-Making students
From November 7 to 19, the PCA Gallery will host the installation “Unbodied parties”, created by the second year students of the MFA in Photography and Image Making. The ongoing project is part of the Seminar III Portfolio Development course, which aims to build a common ground for dialogue between the students, Maximiliano Battaglia, Helena Ernst, Patrick Hubbard and Giulia Sidoli.
Submerged by codes, knowledge, and signs, the body crosses the history of civilizations and reveals their footprints. Likewise, it has always fought against impositions, and often betrays its equations, manifesting a desire for liberation. The body’s struggle with the world is thus expressed in its scars, sometimes invisible, as they are inscribed in rather interior research. “Unbodied Parties” gives shape to a dissociated body and presents a deconstructed image that escapes aesthetic models, unitary concepts, and the play of parts.
The mouth in Helena Ernst’s video installation reveals an autonomous, almost childlike existence that refuses normal behavior. Language in-between gestural expressiveness, and indigestible conflict with the hegemony of things. A vision reflected in the ambivalent author’s personification of a doll, the symbolic removal of any barrier to the imagination.
In the same way, Maximiliano Battaglia takes possession of his own and carries out a grotesque metamorphosis that escapes an authoritarian doctrine. A sculptural appearance far from neoclassical equilibrium, and harmonious proportions, releases a warning of uncertainty in the face of the increasing and extreme manipulation of the body condemned to commodification.
In Giulia Sidoli’s work, the body is abandoned and represented indirectly, through traces and objects left behind in our daily lives. Yet, our mind allows us to see it even where it is not physically present. There is a silence that quests for understanding and shifts attention to the ancient opposition between soul and body, unconscious and visible. Here photography touches on its vulnerable potential.
With Patrick Hubbard, the body becomes a projection of the possibility of rebuilding a paternal relationship. However, the process, filtered by artificial intelligence, or the interference of technology, exceeds the limits of corporeality, and moves the fences of the discussion again.
Where does our body begin and end?