Action Bodies

Action Bodies continues the artistic-curatorial exploration of the ifa art collection with a focus on how spaces and bodies are perceived and shaped through movement and collective action. About Selected artworks from the ifa collection are presented alongside contemporary perspectives, illuminating social orders and opening up possibilities for resistance. In this space of co-existence, textile objects, hybrid bodies and social choreographies gradually unfold. Franz Erhard Walther has been creating interactive textile sculptures since the early 1960s, declaring action an art form in itself and turning viewers into key actors. An important source of inspiration for this exhibition, his “action bodies” intertwine object and process. The hand thinks and the body responds. In her cinematic homage to dancer, choreographer and artist Noa Eshkol, Sharon Lockhart explores movement as a form of language, and how dance emerges from within it. Hana Miletić’s hand-woven textiles are interpretations of repairs the artist encounters in public spaces. Her methodology contrasts the fast-paced standardisation of the present with a material and care-based form of labour. Together with a group of schoolchildren, Eglė Budvytytė explores the act of communal shaking with the aim of disrupting established structures in the school system and helping students perceive their bodies as spaces of agency. In Silvi Naçi’s “Handfilm”, invisible pain becomes an archive of gestures and bodies with a gravity of their own. It evolves from an experience of personal limitation towards action and togetherness. Tales Frey’s performance unfolds between dance, sculpture and clothing, combining closeness and distance, freedom and limitation, balance and transformation into a shared body that explores and reimagines liminal spaces. The body is a house, and it is home to the soul. Wolfgang Laib’s Haus (House) of beeswax opens up such interior worlds. Since the late 1970s, his artistic practice has been interrogating our ways of being and acting within fragile natural habitats, making it highly relevant to the present day. Curated by Inka Gressel Read more Toggle Film / Video Sculpture Performance / Live Art