In Body

“The body is the instrument of our hold on the world.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

As a society, we are acutely aware of the power and issue that exists in notions of “body.” We exist in a time where violence against, legislation to control, alterations to, and the dynamics of living in our own skins play out across headlines and in our homes every day.

Inaugural Parent and Educator Artists-in-Residence Hong Hong (she/her), Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz (she/her), Sarah Sudhoff (she/her) and K Sarrantonio (they/them) center their bodies – as subject or tool – in the creation of works that explores questions of identity, family history, motherhood, parenthood, isolation and contemporary society.

Artist Hong Hong’s work marries the intensely physical paper making process with the color and compositional awareness of painting. Often working outdoors under the sun, Hong’s repeated motions – soaking, beating, rinsing, and carrying pulp, pouring and pushing the fibers on her screens, then lifting the large sheets of paper connect her to her environment and notions of time. Her ongoing movements yield an almost ritualistic choreography or movement to create an object that is both present and decaying, formed yet fragile like nature, our bodies, and time.

Rhythm, movement, and painting are also present in Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz's work. An interdisciplinary artist, her love of 18th century painting uses the formal figure, landscape, rich costuming and color to dissect cultural constructs of Latinness, Blackness, elitism and class. Her durational performances use her body as a vehicle to break down boundaries between the artist and the viewer. Her content becomes personal as she directly engages with her audience, who are required to ultimately see her as a human being engaging in challenging issues.

Like Raimundi-Ortiz, Sarah Sudhoff's body is a primary medium in her work. Her performances, photographs and videos interweave themes of gender, science, with her personal experience as a woman, mother, sister, and daughter within shifting family and cultural dynamics. We see Sudhoff’s presence in each of her artworks. Her body is evident; suspended or engaged in action, or through the evidence of her touch - bite marks and piles of pencil shavings are evidence of her physical labor.

There is little representation of Queer, transgender, masculine of center pregnancy and parenthood both in art and popular media. K Sarrantonio uses their personal life experience to create images that reflect their personal experiences while representing aspects of queer domesticity that challenge our collective cultural practice of gendering the body. Trained as a printmaker, their screenprints are often taken from video stills of their performances. Materials including paper, fabric, fishing line, wood and steel bring flexibility, fragility, transparency, tension and illusion to K’s work.

In Body and HONG HONG'S Parent and Educator Artist-in-Residence are generously supported by Windgate Foundation.

WANDA RAIMUNDI-ORTIZ'S  Parent and Educator Artist-in-Residence is supported through a partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.