'Union' by Barbara Kapusta at Jesuitenfoyer, Vienna

„Union“ at Jesuitenfoyer Vienna is an index-like overview over the recent body of work by Barbara Kapusta. In her installations she imagines altered forms of cohabitation and creates scenarios which reflect the predominant modes of habitus and communication. Kapustas work focuses on the emergence of social fields, the organization of language, and the production of joint output by diverse bodies. 

Barbara Kapusta links the body with the quest for identity and the fluidity of gender. A body that loves, suffers, ages, is a vulnerable body, at the heart of identity politics. Several sculptural forms made in delicate media such as porcelain or ceramics are meant to represent body parts. They look both shapeless and pending shape, familiar but hard to pin down, known yet ‘other’. 

The gender-less technological protagonist of her video „Dangerous Bodies“ has a body which, throughout the duration of the video, is constantly wavering: at times inflating, occasionally shrinking, always reshaping. The body appears to be reshaping in response to its changing conditions and its various mental states. Its shape is therefore unpredictable, uneven, uncontrolled. Is what escapes our knowledge potentially dangerous? And if so, are politics and power the main questions here and is the body an agency of both?