The body which we inhabit and which is for us the irreducible measure of all things is not in itself irreducible.

-David Harvey, Spaces of Hope

 
Had Karl Marx been present when Protagoras made the famous assertion that, “man is the measure of all things,” he might have offered the correction that: labor is the measure of all things. Systems of production form the circumstances of our existence, yet these systems are determined by the basic agency of the body itself. Therefore, in continuation of UAG’s winter series, the Critical Curatorial Studies program is excited to announce the forthcoming exhibition The Measure of All Things. This exhibition brings together works by Julián D'Angiolillo, Tomashi Jackson, Rodrigo Valenzuela, Katie Bachler and Jade Thacker that complicate the relationship between physical labor and abstract labor through subjective experience of artists as laborers. The methods of all the participating artists–whether performative, oral, subversive or collaborative–address the laboring body from disparate angles. At the intersection of these approaches, the body’s manifold manifestation as object, politic, boundary and system of circulation emerge. In so doing, the artists’ multifaceted approaches collapse the role of the author into facilitator, collaborator, producer and recorder. Not only is art’s critical potential demonstrated within this reflexive space; an opportunity is also provided for us to ruminate on the economic, social, and geographic forces that demarcate our shared corporeality.

Reviews: New University