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Let's Take Back Our Space: 'Female' and 'Male' Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures

Let's Take Back Our Space: 'Female' and 'Male' Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures

Marianne Wex
German, 1937–2020
1977
A photographic installation of 242 gelatin silver prints, paper, and ink in which Marianne Wex assembles and contrasts images of ‘female’ and ‘male’ body language to argue that posture and gesture are shaped by patriarchal social codes.
You encounter long, horizontal boards covered in dense rows of small black-and-white photographs—like a visual catalogue—so that repeated poses read as patterns or grammar rather than isolated moments.
By using an archival, montage-based method to map everyday postures, Wex made visible how visual culture enforces gendered behavior and helped pioneer feminist photographic analysis and body-politics in art and scholarship.
Medium
Two hundred and forty two gelatin silver prints, paper and ink on museum board
Dimensions
Dimensions variable
Classification
Department
Credit
Committee on Photography Fund, and The Modern Women's Fund
Accession
1116.2018.1-213
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
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