Gasworks

Sidsel Meineche Hansen

17 Mar - 29 May 2016

© Sidsel Meineche Hansen
No Right way 2 cum, 2015
Credit: Werkflow, London
SIDSEL MEINECHE HANSEN
SECOND SEX WAR
17 March – 29 May 2016

Gasworks presents SECOND SEX WAR, a solo exhibition and seminar series convened by London-based artist Sidsel Meineche Hansen.

Sidsel Meineche Hansen produces exhibitions, interdisciplinary seminars and publications that explore the relationships between queer feminism, technology and biopolitics in what she refers to as a ‘techno-somatic variant of institutional critique’. Her research-led practice foregrounds the body and its industrial complex, often combining her own low-tech manual craft with outsourced, skilled digital labour.

Her solo exhibition at Gasworks, SECOND SEX WAR, comprises two new commissions: a series of polymer clay sculptures and an animated video presented on Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets. Continuing the artist’s research into the intersection between the human body and capital, this new body of work focuses on how the gender binary is (re)produced in virtual adult entertainment.

Continuing the artist’s research into the intersection between the human body and capital, this new body of work focuses on how the gender binary is (re)produced in virtual adult entertainment.

With Facebook’s recent investment in Oculus Rift for the consumer market and the expansion of the pornography and gaming industries into this new virtual space, the artist will revisit material from the 1982 Barnard Conference on Sexuality, titled: ‘Towards a Politics of Sexuality’. This key event in the history of feminism has come to epitomise the movement’s split into anti-pornography and anti-censorship camps, which later became known as the ‘sex wars’. Informed by these unresolved debates on anti-patriarchal sex, Meineche Hansen’s new work uses the ‘body genres’ of pornography and body horror to carve out a cyber-feminist position within – or against – the standards of the adult entertainment and digital gaming industries.

Informed by these unresolved debates on anti-patriarchal sex, Meineche Hansen’s new work uses the ‘body genres’ of pornography and body horror to carve out a cyber-feminist position within – or against – the standards of the adult entertainment and digital gaming industries.

During the exhibition Meineche Hansen will also organise a series of seminars, bringing together researchers and practitioners from diverse fields to critically reflect on the issues at stake in her work. Further details about these events will be made available in February 2016.

NB - This exhibition includes adult content. Parental discretion is advised.
 

Tags: Al Hansen, Sidsel Meineche Hansen