The Human Body: Measure and Norms

Blindspot Gallery presents “The Human Body: Measure and Norms”, an exhibition featuring the works of seven Hong Kong artists in a variety of artistic media. The showcase seeks to highlight and question the social constraints imposed on the body as a physical, social and political entity, and explore the possibilities of freeing the body from the norms and representations against which it is gauged.
Beyond a physical reality, the human body embodies symbolic and imaginative dimensions that are more substantial. When dealing with measurement and norms, however, the body is often reduced to an object of survey and comparison and used as the reference from which the self and others are defined.
Spanning video and photography documentations and sheet of performance from past performances, performance artist Isaac Chong Wai’s works engage in
interaction of human scales and bodies, and highlight the subjectivity of norms and standards where the body is rendered as marker of physical territories. In sketches and drawings by late artist Antonio Mak, the human figure unfolds as biomorphic forms where objects or other bodies can merge, imposing disorder on the observer’s gaze. Clémence Torres’ sculpture installation and floor signage, which are fit to the artist’s body measurements and to which the visitors must adapt, challenge the legitimacy of all norms.
Probing into one’s perception of the human body, Otto Li Tin Lun’s laser etching on crystal and LED unit features an engraving of the body structure mimicking x-ray imagery. The work calls into question the methods through which a normality can be defined with an increased use of technologies. Ho Sin Tung’s portraits of dancers with multiple limbs defy common conceptions of physical abnormalities, hinting at a creature not conforming to this world. Angela Su’s video narrative explores social and political norms as evidenced in individual control through psychiatry, while her hair embroidery suggests a morphing of the human body and other forms that transgresses all norms and opens paths to new dimensions. Ho Siu Kee’s video documented performance featuring wearable sculptures, and his installation and performance with sand raise the viewers’ awareness of the limitations of the body to free oneself from them.
“The Human Body: Measure and Norms” is part II of a Hong Kong trilogy: bestiary, body & soul curated by Caroline Ha Thuc.