New Criticals

"'Body Anxiety' shares the varied perspectives of artists who examine gendered embodiment, performance and self-representation on the internet. Throughout art and film history, the female body and nude has been an ongoing subject in male-authored work. More often than not, the woman’s body is capitalized on in these works while their voice is muted. From the Seventies onwards, female artists employed video and performance to reclaim their bodies from this art historical trajectory. Today, artists use the internet as a platform to create and share their own imagery. While appropriation might be a common practice in contemporary art, using the internet as gender-queer performative space allows artists to question contemporary attitudes towards femininity. In “Body Anxiety” Schrager and Chan have selected a collection of female-empowering artworks to present in one single location in hopes of reshaping the pre-existing narrative of gendered appropriation."

Leah Schrager and Jennifer Chan, Curators, Body Anxiety

Endam Nihan

"As this show attempts to point out, the art world is more likely to value women who are “made art” over women who “make art.” It is a phenomenon that I call Man Hands." - Leah Schrager

Andrea Crespo

"Calling a woman a camwhore is just an excuse to call her a whore. The world doesn’t like women who want attention or use their bodies in ways that don’t interest men. The notion that women’s self-imagery could be decontextualized and aggregated for entertainment or ridicule produces an invariable amount of anxiety for any woman who chooses to show her face and body online." - Jennifer Chan

Saoirse Wall

"Public spaces are gendered spaces; the web is gendered space. Once you reveal yourself to be a female-identified user, people treat you like one. On the internet I cannot escape who I really am, I can only abandon my body." - Jennifer Chan

Victoria Campbell

"The female painter is a woman who makes visual art in which she marks (in some manner) on images (often manipulated) of her own body. These women are “painting,” but not in the same way as their male counterparts." - Leah Schrager

RAFiA Santana

"We could however, use the internet’s potential for opportunity for reclamation, disruption and subversion of traditional attitudes to gender. Opting to act in ways that appease the sexual egos of men is a tradeoff that would require a lot of self-loathing and belief that male approval is important to social success." - Jennifer Chan

May Waver

The entire exhibition can be viewed online at http://bodyanxiety.com/