The Mental Body takes a new look at the kinship between mind and body. How do thoughts and feelings materialize in bodies? And how does our perception of corporeality affect the way we think about ourselves and others? Despite persisting reductionist ideas of gendered and biological identity, bodies tell manifold complex stories. For bodies are shaped by experiences and environments, by inequities and privileges, and even by the inequities and privileges that imprinted upon those before us. But bodies are also formed by mental means, by perception, concept and feeling. Where the medical establishment has sought to diagnose disorders, mind-body phenomena have been well researched. Examples might range from phantom pain — pain coming from a limb that is no longer there — to body dismorphia. However, those instances, where individuals are actively seeking to bring their physical self in harmony with their mental self, out of instinct or intent, are less discussed or researched. This exhibition concerns itself with aesthetic acts of such self-creation and self-care.
