Opening: Friday 18 August from 6-8pm.

We think, feel and understand with our whole being, not just our heads. Despite the separation of mind and body that still prevails in the West, the artistic practices in “Insides Out” render feelings and perception material as one with the body. The exhibition demonstrates a changing Western acknowledgment of the body as more than just a receptor for feelings or a receiver of transmissions from the mind. Physical intelligence is grasped through a materially embodied experience: feeling and knowledge are not only reflected through a physical form but exist as such. Daiga Grantina, Yein Lee and Tenant of Culture bridge the now narrowing but still prevalent gap between mind and body through traditionally art-adjacent materials and hand-craft techniques. The materiality of their chosen mediums inherently addresses tangible feelings and their physical practices are a direct material experience of perception, merely by way of doing as an act.

Notions of self and society are subject to socio-cultural and historical influence. Daiga Grantina, Yein Lee and Tenant of Culture acknowledge how our experience of the world, with all its implications, is a complex exchange of body and mind with the world. It is their artistic practices that aid them in coming to terms with this experience. They develop concepts that unite our physical forms and modes of perception by making material things with their own bodies, adopting context-laden practices and techniques to do so. The shell of the body, i.e. the material spirit, is porous and permeable, it both expands outwards into the world and dissolves within it, in inseparable, abstract, associative and poetic constellations of the interior and exterior. 

The exhibition title “Insides Out” not only describes the symbiosis of the intellectual with the corporeal – the material mind – but also refers to the transfer of this physical, experiential complex beyond the human body. The body becomes boundary-less and thus our ability to perceive the world multiplies and disperses within it.

Curated by Sarah Crowe and Alke Heykes.

The exhibition will take place at the Altes Rathaus in cooperation with the City of Göttingen’s Fachdienst Kultur. We thank our funding partners: Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst, Stiftung Niedersachsen, Sparkasse Göttingen, Stadt Göttingen and Landschaftsverband Südniedersachsen e.V.