The exhibition States of Rebirth examines the correlation between the body, movement and societal structures in physical and digital spaces, through a focus on documentary and conceptual projects in contemporary Performance-, Portrait and Dance-Photography.
 

As a choreography – of photographs concerning of the relationship between bodies in motion – this exhibition explores how our attitudes, gestures and affectations at once reflect, configure and transform how we negotiate societal change. In particular, how our normative, algorithmic visual culture – and its discerning, deriding gaze – is visible in our restless bodies: how they move; how they slouch, grope, evade or repell; how they sink; or how they stand tall; suppose a gesture, strike a pose; how they influence and reflect each other; how they grasp for connection.
 

Experiences of migration, marginalisation and social exclusion shape our body language, our perception of the self and the other. Artists have developed new artistic principles in their ‘Body Images’ to explore the relationship between personal experience and socio-political dynamics. In doing so, they question our power structures, identity, belonging, matters of the refugee experience and the colonial gaze, and how they might all be redirected in the body as sources of empowerment, resistance and transformation – like rearranging our posture.
 

The exhibition opened on February 20 in the museum’s Phoxxi space with Falling Reversely, a performance by Isaac Chong Wai. Curated by Nadine Isabelle Henrich, States of Rebirth will be on view from February 21 to August 17, 2025.

​​https://www.deichtorhallen.de/en/ausstellung/states-of-rebirth

Image: Isaac Chong Wai, Self Portrait: The evening when I was beaten up by a stranger with a glass bottle, 2015