iMuseum of Modern Art (MoMA)Midtown Manhattan
Taking Back Our Space: Photographic Perspectives
Marianne Wex's 1970s feminist photo survey of gendered body language is shown alongside contemporary artists Nona Faustine, Martine Gutierrez, K8 Hardy, Yuki Kihara, Joiri Minaya, Paulina Olowska, and Wendy Red Star, reappraising bodies in public space.
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"I didn't know why I sat so tight, so constricted even when I was alone," Marianne Wex said. So from 1972 to 1977 she photographed strangers on Hamburg's streets, then rephotographed ads, fashion magazines, porn, film stills and classical sculpture. She split it all by gender and sorted it into panels like "Standing Arms," "Seated Legs" and "Possessive Holds."
MoMA owns the whole project, and here it shares a gallery with seven contemporary artists, each shown at MoMA for the first time. You turn from Wex's sorted strangers to K8 Hardy in wigs and costumes across fifty prints, sampling the poses Wex filed as male or female. Wex had a panel category for how people sit decades before the MTA printed posters about it.
No major critic has reviewed it yet, so take it as the curators' argument: a 1970s system, retested on race, colonialism and Indigenous sovereignty. It's in the second-floor Paul J. Sachs Galleries until May 2, 2027.
Look for
Martine Gutierrez, Body En Thrall
Posed like a Hollywood starlet, Gutierrez wraps her legs around a mannequin and stares at the camera, flipping the dynamics of Wex's "Possessive Holds" panels.
Nona Faustine at the Tweed Courthouse
Nude except for white heels, Faustine braces against a marble column of the downtown Manhattan courthouse, a few steps from the African Burial Ground.
Yuki Kihara's fa'afafine after Gauguin
Three photographs restage Gauguin's Polynesian paintings with fa'afafine models who hold your gaze, in front of waterfalls, lush plants and a wallpaper of Samoa's Aleipata islands.
Joiri Minaya, Wake
Minaya peels off a tropical-print bodysuit while waves from a tourist postcard are laid over her, so she half disappears into the background.
Wendy Red Star's Accession collages
Ten collages layer 1930s Denver Art Museum catalogue drawings of Apsáalooke objects with her own photographs from the Crow Fair.
Good for
- Going Solo
- Nerding Out
With kids
Wex's panels include rephotographed pornography and several works show nudity, so check the room before bringing younger children.
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Image credits
6
- Taking Back Our Space: Photographic PerspectivesCourtesy of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
- Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450-1500The Frick Collection
- Splendido, As Seen by Chris RhodesCourtesy of Aperture
- Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)hibino via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- The Frick CollectionJim.henderson / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- The Morgan Library & MuseumMike Peel, CC BY-SA 4.0