OPENING: Arm and Protect. Ala Savashevich

curator: Joanna Sokołowska
exhibition duration: 16 Nov–13 Jan 2024
opening: 16 Nov 23 (Thursday), 6 p.m.
tour led by artist and curator: 23 Nov 23 (Thursday), 6 p.m.

Arm and Protect is an exhibition about the exploitation and reclaiming of the body by persons forced into women’s social roles. However, in Ala Savashevich’s series of new works, no bodies are directly visible. The artist confronts the traces of forces that seemingly operate “beyond the periphery of the skin”[1]: in global and local markets, in offices and fields, at the assembly line, in services, families, schools, churches. Dispersed and omnipresent for generations, they break backs and bend necks. They suck out vital forces and take away life itself. They enforce repetitive gestures or unnatural stillness. They prohibit the expression of emotions and the pursuit of one’s needs, teaching instead how to conform to the needs of others. But up to a point.