the body is a blade (that sharpens by cutting)
Photos: Karley Sullivan
The body — expands, appropriates, consumes, absorbs…
the body is a blade (that sharpens by cutting) presents an exhibition that examines how marginalized bodies circumvent and cut through the violent framework of representation. The show’s title is a quote from Ocean Vuong’s poem titled, “Headfirst.” His writings inquire about the legacy of the United States’ wars and how bodies are quintessential inheritors of violence. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, civil unrest in opposition to systemic racism, and the 2020 United States presidential election, we are alarmed by the hypervisibility of Black, Brown, and othered bodies as disposable tools used to maintain the falsehood of hegemonic world order.
This exhibition includes artists Samira Yamin, Kenneth Yuen, and Charlotte Zhang, who bring forth a cosmology of discourses surrounding the neo-orientalist gaze at the Middle East, material phenomenology, and dis-/re-figurement of the body in order to pierce through the dangerous narrative surrounding generational violence.
An accompanying exhibition catalog, with writings by Sarah Yanni, is available online or in print at the FOCA exhibition space beginning the week of November 15.
Please open or download the PDF in your preferred application with Two Page View.
