MoMA Exhibition Explores Body Politics and Public Posture

Marianne Wex and the Photographic Archive of Public Posture

Marianne Wex documented everyday public gestures on the streets of Hamburg, sorting them into typologies based on physical parts like arms, legs, heads, hands, and feet. Drawing on visual sources including books, newspapers, advertisements, and film stills, she organized these gestures to expose how gender is socially produced. According to the Museum of Modern Art, her efforts culminated in the project Let’s Take Back Our Space: ‘Female’ and ‘Male’ Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures, which the institution acquired in 2018.

MoMA Connects Historical Feminist Art to Contemporary Intersectional Perspectives

The Museum of Modern Art utilizes Wex’s acquired project as the foundational starting point for its exhibition Taking Back Our Space: Photographic Perspectives, running from September 20 to May 2, 2027. Roxana Marcoci, the acting chief curator of photography at MoMA, states that she was interested in the new conversations the project could generate. Marcoci notes that while Wex exposed the social choreography of the body in public space, the contemporary artists gathered in the show expand that inquiry through intersectional perspectives attentive to race, colonialism, Indigenous sovereignty, sexuality, and self-representation.

Seven Contemporary Artists Rethink the Politics of Body and Space

The exhibition features seven contemporary artists whose work tests, complicates, and extends Wex’s initial framework across different mediums and cultural lenses. According to exhibition materials:

• Nona Faustine: Uses her body to highlight locations marked by histories of enslavement and racial violence.
• Martine Gutierrez: Merges the roles of artist, editor, model, and creative director to challenge who holds the authority to construct identity.
• Joiri Minaya: Dismantles the visual languages that have long exoticised and commodified women and the Caribbean.
• Yuki Kihara: Features Indigenous Samoan fa’afafine models to shift narratives from a colonial gaze to self-representation.
• Wendy Red Star: Transforms archives into spaces for living Indigenous memory rather than colonial classification.
• K8 Hardy and Paulina Olowska: Investigate how gender and identity are continually performed and rewritten through the body and gesture.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the primary focus of the MoMA exhibition Taking Back Our Space?

According to the Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition creates a dialogue between Marianne Wex’s 1970s photographic project on gendered body language and the work of seven contemporary artists analyzing space, bodies, and intersectional feminist perspectives.

Who are the curators and artists involved in the exhibition?

The exhibition is led by Roxana Marcoci, acting chief curator of photography at MoMA. It features works by Nona Faustine, Martine Gutierrez, Joiri Minaya, Yuki Kihara, Wendy Red Star, K8 Hardy, and Paulina Olowska.

When is Taking Back Our Space open to the public?

The exhibition runs from September 20 through May 2, 2027, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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