Moving Bodies, Moving Images

  • WG_MovingBodies22_Web-Crop_1200-x-800_V1

    Hetain Patel, Trinity, 2021 (film still) HD video, colour, sound, 23 minutes. Courtesy the artist and Chatterjee & Lal

Book now

Book Now

Past Exhibition


This exhibition was on 12 October 2022 – 8 January 2023

Access Information

Moving Bodies, Moving Images

12 October 2022 – 8 January 2023

★★★★  – ‘…worth carving out … an afternoon to see’Evening Standard
‘… promises to be an exhibition for this moment’The Guardian

Across a range of projections and screens dispersed throughout the galleries, Moving Bodies, Moving Images brings together a selection of short films made in the last decade by contemporary artists exploring the intersection of dance, choreography and moving image. The presented works focus on performing bodies and unfold as both individual works but also as collective storytelling, exploring timely topics, ranging from gender politics and desire to bodily memory, resistance, personal healing and collective identities.

Also on display are materials related to the making of the films, including production stills, research, reference texts and scores.

Films are on a timed rotation. To enhance your visit we recommend booking a free time slot.

This exhibition has been generously supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Content Warning

Please note some content in the exhibition you are about to enter contains expletives and nudity. There are also flashing lights in Gallery 8.

Participating Artists:

Alexandra Bachzetsis

Alexandra Bachzetsis (b. 1974, Zurich; lives and works in Zurich) is an artist and choreographer. Her interdisciplinary practice unfolds at the intersection of dance, performance, visual art and theatre, involving choreographies of the body and how popular culture provides source material for gesture, expression and identification. She explores the mutual influence between the use of gesture and movement in mainstream, commercial media and in art.

Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz

Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz (b. 1972, Lausanne and 1963, Berlin; live and work in Berlin) have been working collaboratively since 2007. Their film installations capture performances in front of the camera, often starting with a song, an image or a score. Their choreography focuses on the tensions between visibility and opacity, questioning normative historical narratives and conventions of spectatorship. The performers in their films are choreographers, dancers, artists and musicians, with whom they have an ongoing dialogue about performance, the violent history of visibility, but also companionship, glamour and resistance.

Eglė Budvytytė

Eglė Budvytytė (b. 1981, Kaunas, Lithuania; lives and works in Amsterdam) works at the intersection of music, poetry, radio broadcast, video and performance to explore the power of collectivity, vulnerability, and permeability between bodies and the environments they inhabit. Drawing on choreography composed of existing movements and gestures, Budvytytė questions the consciousness of our surroundings through situations which are part-staged and part-improvised.

 

Eric Minh Cuong Castaing

Eric Minh Cuong Castaing (b. 1979, Seine-Saint-Denis, France; lives and works in Marseille, France) is an artist and choreographer. He was associate artist at the Ballet National de Marseille from 2016–19. His choreographic works explore relational modes, representations and the perception of bodies in the 21st century, questioning the relationship between reality and fiction, nature and culture, organic and artificial. In 2007, he founded the dance company Shonen, who produce shows, installations, performances and films.

Alia Farid

Alia Farid’s (b.1985, Kuwait; lives and works in Kuwait and Puerto Rico) multidisciplinary practice ranges from writing and drawing to film and sculpture. Farid gives visibility to narratives that are obscured by the dominant discourse. She writes ‘I began making work somewhere in between art, architecture and urban anthropology. Today I’m still interested in these areas, but with a much more focused point on telling how informal networks are forced to make up for lack of formal structure.’

Hetain Patel

Hetain Patel (b.1980, Bolton, UK; lives and works in London) works across film, performance, painting and costume design to look at ‘identity and language, challenging common assumptions based on how we look or where we come from.’ Growing up in a working-class British Gujarati household on the outskirts of Bolton, Patel turned to popular culture as an escape from racial abuse and social alienation. Patel works across multiple languages, culturally and artistically, and often collaborates with artists from different disciplines and with family members.

Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca 

Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca (b. 1980, Brazil and b.1975, Germany; live and work in Recife, Brazil) produce films and video installations that feature protagonists engaged in cultural production. The duo typically collaborate with non-actors, from writing scripts to staging performances on camera. The resulting works are underscore the cultural, economic and social conditions of the contexts in which they are filmed.

Alberta Whittle

Alberta Whittle’s (b.1980, Bridgetown, Barbados; lives and works between Barbados and Scotland) research-led practice is concerned with the legacies of slavery and apartheid, the erasure of Black people in everyday society through the avoidance and suppression of Black histories and perspectives, and ecological emergency. Her moving-image works interweave filmed footage and found material, text, and sound.

You May Also Like

MovingBodiesMovingImages_1024x1024

Moving Bodies, Moving Images Exhibition Catalogue

Published to accompany the Moving Bodies, Moving Images exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, this 200-page catalogue illustrates a bold assembly of contemporary moving image works through a full selection of colour stills and three newly commissioned essays exploring the political and narrative potential of the performing body.

£24.95

Hear, now_Thumbnails_2023_Ep 19_v1

Hear, Now: Performance Now

Episode 19 of Hear, Now explores the relationship between performance art and the contexts in which it is shown. Guests featured include co-founder of Live Art Development Agency, Lois Keidan, Moving Bodies, Moving Images contributor Hetain Patel, artist Leah Clements, and curator Erin Li.