Bodies are porous, weird and gross, much as we might try to forget it. Unruly Bodies at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) reminds us just how grotesque they can be. Working from the assumption that the “unruly” body is implicitly female, Black, disabled, queer or other, the exhibition is made up of work by 13 female and non-binary artists. They examine the ways in which bodies are the site of patriarchy, misogyny, racism and ableism. Bodies are not presented as empowering or reclaimable, but instead as abject, disgusting or objectified. Many of these works seem to want to discard or fundamentally alter the body, rather than embrace its weirdness. The CCA is a remarkably fitting space for this exhibition, given its skeletal, stripped back character. The building almost feels like a dissected, disembowelled body itself.
The most dramatic work in the show is Giulia Cenci’s series, dry salvages, which fills an entire room. It is a series of body parts cast from aluminium which have been hung from hooks in old shower stalls. Dried vines or clumps of roots descend from some of them, and one is being devoured by the figure of a wolf. It feels like the set of a horror movie, right down to the gallery space itself – the tank that once supplied the Victorian bathhouse which houses the CCA. These pieces of bodies are spooky, but they are also so far removed from living bodies that I found it hard to be horrified by them. Like most of the works here, it reminded me that my experience of living in a body among other bodies is only mine – it is not universal.
The most engaging works in the exhibition prompt the viewer to think about their own body in relation to the work. Anna Perach’s wonderfully tactile wearable sculptures are made of vibrant, fuzzy textiles. Though they sit on mannequins, I immediately wanted to be inside them and see my body as part of their materiality. In the final room of the exhibition, the film Metamorph, a collaborative work by Clémentine Bedos, Holly Hunter, Verity Coward and Assia Ghendir, made me think about my body in the space of the film, too. It reimagines the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne through a modern, queer lens, focusing on the moment in which Daphne transforms into a tree to escape the pursuit of Apollo. The film oscillates between Daphne’s perspective, in which vision is obscured and changing, and Apollo’s, watching Daphne transform. It invites the viewer into the story and into the strange physicality of metamorphosis.
Walking through the exhibition, I was struck by the strange emptiness of bodies that have been reduced to just that: bodies, and nothing else. What is a body without the self inside it? How can the two be divided? And what is the point of trying to? Not all the artists here answer this question or even seem interested in engaging in it, but the works of those who don’t feel empty. All the artists represented here are fascinated by bodies: how they look, the things that grow inside them or drip out of them, the way they function when they are broken into parts and pieces and how other people see them. But what I couldn’t stop questioning was the isolation of a “body” from a person. The gaping vaginas of Ebecho Muslimova’s works, the grotesque breasts of Miriam Cahn’s, the violent fights-cum-orgasms of Shadi Al-Atallah’s – none of these images felt connected to any sense of self, individuality or soul. Perhaps that lack is precisely their point, but they failed to evoke for me the experience of actually living in a body.
I felt alienated by these images because I don’t locate my identity primarily in my body – I find it in my heart and mind, my ideas, my relationships, the things I do with my days. I need a body to do all of these things, but I am so much more than a body. It can be difficult to engage in a conversation about embodiment without falling into essentialism, but other works in this exhibition succeed in doing so, such as Perach’s wonderful sculptures and Camille Henrot’s “leaky” ink washes. The complex aims of Unruly Bodies don’t cohere into something more than a provocation.
• Unruly Bodies is at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London, until 3 September.
