Arts and Design

Soft Bodies review – tech simulations of life's squishy stuff


If we have learned anything this year, it is that our bodies are soft. They are permeable, open to absorbing deadly viruses. Even Olympians have had to abandon their games in the face of Covid-19. And having followed the safety arrows, stood behind the line, covered my mouth, sat near a window, remained socially distanced, doused myself in sanitiser and coughed into my elbow (not persistently, just choking on errant biscuit crumbs), by the time I eventually arrive at Castlefield Gallery in Manchester, I am acutely aware of the vulnerability of my own body.

Despite being conceived in the good old days when no one had even uttered the word “coronavirus”, Soft Bodies – a mixed-media exhibition of 12 primarily UK-based artists – is right on time. Soft-body dynamics also refers to the field of computer-generated graphics concerned with simulating malleable materials such as muscle, fat, hair, vegetation and fabric. This was the original starting point for the exhibition, and participants were invited to recreate these squishy 3D objects on flat surfaces. The less said about this the better, since from Leonardo da Vinci to Hockney, artists have been reconfiguring the physical world in 2D, regardless of whether they used ink or computer-generated graphics.

Emma Cousin’s Hook line and sink her.
Instrusive … Emma Cousin’s Hook Line and Sink Her. Photograph: Emma Cousin/Image courtesy of the artist

The most compelling part of this exhibition is to be found dancing across the walls. London-based artist Emma Cousin fills the double-height space with a painting of fleshy limbs and faces in an array of muted colours. Sinewy hands grasp at veiny, deflated breasts and feet flail outwards as bodies fold inwards. Named Oyster in reference to the method of farming oysters on a rope, the the o-shaped mouths could be expressing pleasure or horror. Two more paintings by Cousin, Vaseline and Hook Line and Sink Her, are more clear cut, with fingers poking and prodding painfully at eyes, noses, mouths and nipples. Cousin’s figures are never solitary; bodies are always being manipulated by intrusive hands, highlighting that we are subject to either the kind or abusive will of external forces.

The bright tones of 2019 New Contemporaries participant Xiuching Tsay’s canvases – though similar to the swirling abstractions in Cousin’s work – offer a more hopeful perspective on bodies in community. Dreamy, pastel colours and spherical, innocent eyes soften Tsay’s sci-fi landscapes that feature interconnected bulbous forms. Even the harrowing work Keeping Away From the Flood of Melting Sun, where an open-mouthed sun stares down at what appears to be an unborn child in the uterus, is not entirely cataclysmic; Baby is positioned higher than its parent, blocking the sun’s rays, suggesting that the next generation could still save us all.

Xiuching Tsay’s Keeping away from the flood of melting sun.
Xiuching Tsay’s Keeping away from the flood of melting sun. Photograph: Xiuching Tsay/Courtesy of the artist

The vessels within which we exist are subject to the environment we inhabit, and that extends into the digital realm, too. In The Perfect Human, Stine Deja applies the same impersonal observations to a short film of an avatar searching on Google, learning how to take the perfect selfie on YouTube and socialising on Facebook. “How does the perfect human socialise?” the narrator asks, and we hear not voices, but the clicking of a keyboard and a mouse. The minimisation of human interaction into tiny finger taps feels reductive, but upstairs in George Gibson’s Other Kin, online space is the land of opportunity. In an archaically bound volume, Gibson explores the affirmation of the Otherkin community (who identify as partially or wholly animal) through the collation of visuals from mainstream culture, including Instagram filters and computer game clips.

Sadé Mica, Tests in Malham No.3.
Gender poses … Sadé Mica, Tests in Malham No.3. Photograph: Sadé Mica/Image courtesy of the artist

Identity is closely tied to the physical form, something recognised by Sadé Mica, whose ongoing photography series Tests in Malham challenges gender-normative assumptions. Standing alone in the Yorkshire Dales, the Manchester-based artist adopts traditional life model poses, highlighting how gender performance is still expected even when stripped of clothing. Out of context, it is still possible to recognise a strong stance as “male” and an arm raised casually over the head as “female”. Ankle-deep in water, Mica’s reclamation of both positions in a rugged landscape feels powerful, there is a steeliness to their gaze and an agency in their decision to stand both ways. This doesn’t feel soft, it is triumphant and optimistic – it says it is possible to adapt and change.

As I peek over my mask, I think about all the adapting we’ve all had to do in the past six months, and I remember my yet-to-be-born son and marvel afresh at my body’s ability to quietly grow a tiny human. Perhaps we are not so soft after all.



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