AARHUS.- Just before the autumn holidays, Kunsthal Aarhus opens the first two chapters under the exhibition title I am your Body. The exhibitions focus on the body and what it means to be human and will open in two chapters.
CHAPTER 1
I am your Body: Chapter 1 – Automation is a solo show by Michala Paludan. In the exhibition, Paludan shows newly commissioned installation with sound, video and objects alongside her emblematic photo series, The Unposed (EoAT). Here, photographic portraits of robot hands are presented without further information, and the viewer is asked to assemble meaning and context. In the robotics industry, the acronym EoAT refers to End of Arm Tools; that is, a tool required for performing a specific task such as holding, cutting, lifting, hammering, stroking, etc. As the subject of a portrait, the machine – rather than what it produces – is the focus and, in mirroring the hands of human workers, Paludan emphasizes their absence.
Paludan is based in Copenhagen, Denmark for the last decade, Paludan’s works – which are expressed through photography, videos and installations – investigate our perceptions of society and power within political landscapes. Created through interdisciplinary processes, they require extensive planning and research, and encompass research-based questions and competing narratives of AI and automation that push them beyond the boundaries of genre.
CHAPTER 2
I am your Body: Chapter 2 – Flesh is a group show. In it, six East and South Asian artists discuss what humanity is.
Gallery 1 is designed like a movie theater. In it, two documentaries by filmmaker and artist Yoonsuk Jung (South Korea) – Non-Fiction Diary (2013) and Lash (2024) – are played. Jung's works are, fundamentally, about human existence and humanity, and they explore these concepts through images of humans sentenced to death, and of those who produce or consume human replacements.
Gallery 2 is an archive. It features performances from four established, internationally prominent and acclaimed artists born in the 1950 and 1960s – Zhang Huan (China), Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook (Thailand), Melati Suryodarmo (Indonesia), and He Chengyao (China) – mostly from early in their artistic practices. These performances show how bodies routinely act as part of societal mechanisms, and can therefore be used to explore complex and varied themes including political persecution, restrictive roles, absurdity, death, and endurance.
Gallery 3 is a rotunda which contains seven immersive paintings by Keunmin Lee (South Korea) which were specially commissioned for this exhibition. Titled Crimson Head, Connected Body, Connected Skin, and Organic Plate, they feature Lee’s personal experiences of hallucinations. These works drift between abstraction and figuration, containing forms that resemble human body parts and flesh.
