Lewis’s Building

Our full exhibition programme, including our public artworks, is now closed. Visitors can still enjoy art in person at FACT and Bluecoat until August & September.

The artists gathered in this venue questioned what we consider a body to be and what it might mean to be human. Ostensibly, a straightforward notion – yet our answers are often drawn from an historical Western assumption of the body as that of a white heterosexual male. ‘Universal’ understandings such as this structurally shape the way we think of bodies, and humans – often in binary terms. For example, the body is often understood as a border between the internal self and the external world. Dualisms such as mind/body are integrated into the fabric of Western thinking, making it difficult to imagine experience outside of these constraints. Another example is the opposition between male/female and associated stereotypes, where a female’s identity is often regarded as more entangled in her bodily existence – more biological and less rational. These characteristics are also attributed to colonised and racialised bodies. The fact is, however, that humans imagine and experience the nature, limits and capacities of the human body – and its relation to the self – in extremely diverse ways.

The Liverpool Biennial exhibition at the Lewis's Building closed on Sunday 27 June.