States of Rebirth: Body Images in Motion – PHOXXI. Haus der Photographie Temporär der Deichtorhallen Hamburg | 21.02.-17.08.2025

“States of Rebirth” at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg sheds light on the relationships between the body, movement and social structures in physical and digital spaces. The exhibition focuses on documentary and conceptual projects in contemporary performance, portrait and dance photography. Using a choreography that relates photographs of moving bodies in space to one another, the exhibition examines the extent to which postures, gestures and poses reflect, shape and transform the negotiation processes of social change.

Image above: Roxana Rios, Figure, Form, 2020 – ongoing, © Roxana Rios.

The exhibition brings together works by the artists KhingWei Bai, Felipe Romero Beltrán, Moshtari Hilal, Naomi Lulendo, Ana Maria Sales Prado, Roxana Rios, Aykan Safoğlu, Isaac Chong Wai and Farren van Wyk, who photographically stage “glocal bodies” in dialogue with one another. Iranian dance scholar Elaheh Hatami describes “glocal” as bodies that are both locally present and have connections to more than one place.

“States of Rebirth” traces a turning point in the understanding of views from bodies onto bodies that deconstruct normative aesthetic categories as instruments of social affiliation. As Moshtari Hilal put it in her poetic and at the same time analytically precise autobiographical text Ugliness, published in 2023: “The gaze turns: ugly is not who is looked at, but who looks with the intention of dehumanisation.”

Bodies tell stories, whether in everyday life or in choreographed movements. On the one hand, our poses, postures and touches reflect our embedding in social (power) structures, but at the same time they can also be tools of self-empowerment and transformation. Installative and performative photographic works deal conceptually with negotiation processes and the reorganisation of learned hierarchies and systems of order.

Experiences of migration, marginalisation and social exclusion shape body language and the perception of oneself and others in many different ways. Performative and photographic approaches address the question of how specific body movements can be used as a starting point for self-empowerment, resistance and transformation or how revealing and dismantling social viewing regimes makes it possible to reorganise and reassemble them.

Following on from the “Viral Hallucinations” series, the exhibition also examines which body images in analogue and digital space are privileged by algorithmic visibility, and which artistic works can rearrange, subvert and transform these networked image regimes. “States of Rebirth” brings current artistic works into dialogue with each other, which start precisely there.

Curator
Nadine Isabelle Henrich, Curator House of Photography.
The exhibition is produced by the Deichtorhallen Hamburg.

WHEN?

Opening: Thursday, 20. February, at 7 pm.

Exhibition dates: Friday, 21. February – Sunday, 17. August 2025

Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 11 am – 6 pm

WHERE?

PHOXXI. Haus der Photographie Temporär / Deichtorhallen Hamburg
Deichtorstraße 1-2
20095 Hamburg