PRESENTATION: Vital Signs-Artists And The Body

Throughout the 20th century, artists have imagined the body and ideas of the self as fluid and open to ongoing transformations. The group exhibition “Vital Signs” includes over 100 works by artists who question what it means to be an individual within a larger society—and how socially sustained categories such as gender, race, and sexual identity are rooted in abstraction.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: MoMA Archive

The international, cross-generational group of artists in the exhibition “Vital Signs-Artists And The Body”  use depictions of the body to address the question of what it means to be an individual within society—and how socially sustained categories of gender, race, and identity are rooted in abstraction. “Vital Signs” presents over 100 works by approximately 65 artists, primarily drawn from the MoMa’s collection. A majority of works in the exhibition were made by artists who are women or gender-expansive, highlighting ways in which human forms and gender intersect in these artists’ practices. While the exhibition includes celebrated works from the Museum’s collection, new acquisitions  provide fresh perspectives—as will lesser-known collection works that will be on view for the first time. The exhibition suggests an expanded account of abstraction in the 20th century by exploring the work of artists for whom the bodily and the abstract are deeply intertwined,” said the Curator of the exhibition. “Full of life, the exhibition aims to illuminate some of the ways that artists have reflected on abstraction in its broadest social senses while expanding ideas around what it means to be alive and connect with others”. For some artists in the exhibition, the body can be used to project, distort, and create identities for ourselves and others through acts of play, empathy, or control. Claude Cahun’s photomontage of self-portraits, “M.R.M (Sex)” (c. 1929–30) takes the face as a point of departure in a work that suggests the refusal of a single, categorizable identity. Later artworks similarly explore notions of the self though multiple lenses, including Adrian Piper’s “Food for the Spirit” (1971) and Lynn Hershman Leeson’s” Roberta’s Construction Chart #2″ (1976). Margo Humphrey’s print “The History of Her Life Written Across Her Face” (1991) details a spectrum of the artist’s life experiences rendered as texts and symbols inscribed across the face of a central figure. Other artists focus on the interior materiality of the body through its physical and imagined constitution of muscles, genes, hormones, scars, and bones. They also examine flows of desire and vulnerability, pointing to abstract states of experience, genealogies, and desires that have tangible manifestations in the everyday. Frida Kahlo’s “My Grandparents, My Parents, and I”, for example, utilizes a diagrammatic abstraction of a family-tree diagram. Works that explore the materiality of the body and its gendered implications include a selection of intimate drawings by Christina Ramberg, Rosemary Mayer’s diaphanous yet commanding sculpture “Galla Placidia” (1973) that is a new acquisition to the collection and Lorna Simpson’s poignant series of photographs, “Untitled”( 1992), among others. A film and notebooks by Greer Lankton from the late 1970s reveal an artist whose sense of self was in ongoing transformation.  A number of artists have brought together abstraction and the human form as a means to imagine how boundaries between the human and non-human might be transcended, often through a fantastical merging with other animals or entities. From Thelma Johnson Streat’s jewel-like “Rabbit Man” (1941), through a constellation of works by Birgit Jürgenssen, to the imposing and intricate figure of Mrinalini Mukherjee’s “Yakshi” (1984), artists harness vibrant intersections of abstraction and figuration as a means to explore various forms of transcendence, whether as an escape from the limitations of the body or as a means to delight in and play with those same limitations, as a kind of freedom. Rarely seen works such as Bhupen P. Khakhar’s “Kali” (1965), which is on view for the first time at MoMA, suggest the proximities between the human and the sacred, while important new acquisitions like Belkis Ayón’s “Resurrection” (1998) and Ted Joans’s” Long Distance” (1976– 2005)—a more than 9-meter-long exquisite corpse drawing with over 130 contributors from around the globe—imagine new relationships between the individual and the collective.

Works by: Martine Syms, Barbara Hammer, Carol Rama, Kiki Smith, Sandra Payne, Bhupen Khakhar. Rebecca Horn, Nancy Graves, Judy Chicago, Maria Lassnig, Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, Claude Cahun, Minnie Evans, Charles Gaines, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Hannah Höch, Margo Humphrey, Jasper Johns, Birgit Jürgenssen, Marisol,  Marisa Merz, Adrian Piper,  Christina Ramberg, Betye Saar, Thelma Johnson Streat,   Alina Szapocznikow, Jo Baer,  Liza Béar, Frida Kahlo, Mary Kelly, José Leonilson, Lorna Simpson, Jackie Winsor, Forrest Bess, Blondell Cummings, Maren Hassinger, Eva Hesse, Kamala Ibrahim, Yayoi Kusama, Rosemary Mayer, Valerie Maynard, Mrinalini Mukherjee, Ann Leda Shapiro, Atsuko Tanaka, Rosemarie Trockel, Hannah Wilke, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Birgit Jürgenssen, Greer Lankton, Joyce Randall Senechallee Lozano, Wanda Pimentel, Kathy Acker, Belkis Ayón, Lynda Benglis, Geta Brătescu, Nancy Grossman, Harmony Hammond, Mako Idemitsu, Suzanne Jackson, Ana Mendieta, Senga Nengudi, Tecla Tofano, Cecilia Vicuña,

Photo left: Rosemary Mayer. Galla Placidia, 1973. Satin, rayon, nylon, cheesecloth, nylon netting, ribbon, dyes, wood, and acrylic paint. 8′ 2″ × 6′ 6″ × 7′ (248.9 × 198.1 × 213.4 cm). Gift of Alice and Tom Tisch and Committee on Painting and Sculpture Funds. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 Courtesy of the Estate of Rosemary Mayer. Digital image © 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, photo by Jonathan Muzikar. Photo right: Mrinalini Mukherjee. Yakshi, 1984. Dyed hemp. 8′ 1″ × 48″ × 29″ (246.4 × 121.9 × 73.7 cm). Committee on Painting and Sculpture Funds, and acquired through the generosity of Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin and the Modern Women’s Fund. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 Mrinalini Mukherjee. Courtesy of the MM Foundation. Digital image © 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, photo by John Wronn

Info: Curators: Lanka Tattersall, Assistant Curator: Margarita Lizcano Hernandez, The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, Manhattan, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 3/11/2024-22/2/2025, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri & Sun 10:30-17:30, Sat 10:30-19:00, www.moma.org/