KANA KAWANISHI PHOTOGRAPHY is pleased to present Body Politics: What Defines the Body?, a group exhibition of seven artists who feature the “body” as their motifs of expressions. The exhibition is made possible with the support of the Grant Program for International Organizations Presenting Korean Artists Exhibitions, hosted by the korea Arts Management Service, and with the cooperation of the Korean Publisher/Art Office, IANN.

The body, which we may feel as something closest to ourselves, is in fact a collective of obscure recognition and is something very vague. Kiyokazu Washida (Philosopher, Principle & President of Kyoto City University of Arts, Director of Sendai Mediatheque), referred to philosopher Nietzsche in his publication Chiguhagu na karada (The Disjointed Body) (Chikuma bunko, 2015), and commented “perhaps the most farthest existence to oneself is his/her own body.”

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Although someone shows you a gastroscopy or an X-ray photograph and tells it is your body, it is quite difficult to actually feel so. When it comes to your own body, sensory information becomes very scarce. (...) No one can ever directly see inside his/her own body, or even their back, or the back of one’s head. Moreover, you can never see your own face throughout your life, whilst it is in that face that all your uncontrolled emotions appear. How vulnerable could that be. (...)

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If only a partial is what I could directly see or touch of my own body, then it would mean, my body can only appear as a whole when I imagine how it would look from a distance. In other words, my body is nothing but my own imagination— i.e., an “image.” Whether being touched or seen, the body can be experienced only partially. Thus, the body can only be recognized as a whole when the disjointed physical perceptions are combined in imagination as a patchwork, and when it forms an “imaginary body.” (...)

Humans have invented various methods to reinforce such vulnerability of the body as an “image.” That is to say, various ways of enforcing the outlines of our existences, and to calm down the anxiety of our fragility. We try to highlight the invisible outlines of our bodies by activating our cutaneous sensories. For example, we’d soak ourselves into hot water, or take cold showers, or bath in the sun, or sweat by playing sports. Or, we have our bodies in contact with other bodies. (...)

The reason why we feel these practices relaxing is because by taking a bath or a shower, the temperature difference of the hot/cold water and the skin would stimulate the skin surface, and awaken the cutaneous senses. The existence of our normally invisible backs or behind our thighs sharply become highlighted at the surface. Although they remain visually invisible, the cutaneous senses clearly highlight the outlines of the body. *1

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This exhibition will present photographic works of seven artists from three countries—Finland, Korea, and Japan—, and will contemplate the elements that may be defining our bodies today in the contemporary world. If our bodies can be only experienced as an image as a whole, collecting the photographic works that feature the human body may stimulate and highlight the cutaneous senses of our society.