Of Bodies in Digital Life at Kunsthaus Langenthal

Artists: James Bantone, bleed, Giulia Essyad, Mona Filleul, Victoria Holdt, Milena Mihajlović, Noemi Pfister, Thalles Piaget, Noah Ismael Wyss

Exhibition title: Of Bodies in Digital Life

Venue: Kunsthaus Langenthal, Langenthal, Switzerland

Date: April 4 – June 23, 2024

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Kunsthaus Langenthal

The exhibition features young artists whose work engages with the body in digital life. Since the dawn of the internet era, the topic has continued to be a subject of discussion as well as of artistic exploration: Utopian visions of transcending the body and becoming cyborg confront the sober reality of swiping over smooth, cold surfaces for hours on end, causing aching joints and disrupted sleep. The dream of a free, democratic network has given way to the mechanisms of the attention economy and commercialization. Virtual spaces and online platforms offer diverse opportunities for self-representation, artistic practice, as well as networking and community-building. The past few years have seen the growth of emancipatory movements surrounding questions of body images and norms, particularly in regard to gender and race. At the same time, virtual spaces beyond these niches continue to be dominated by bodies that peddle normative and gender-stereotypical conceptions of beauty as erotic capital within platform capitalism.

How does the youngest generation of artists, which was born in the 1990s, the decade that saw the launch of the World Wide Web, and grew up with the internet, respond to these developments? How do they bring their everyday experience and critical reflection of media-saturated life to bear on an artistic tradition of representing bodies, which, after all, is one of the great topics in art history?