Still, the body

Good morning, we welcome you to Artissima 2026! This is the audio guide project and you’re listening to track no.3, titled Still, the body, dedicated to the strength and the fragility of the body as a social construct at the center of the contemporary debate. Barbara Kruger, a pioneer of American conceptual art, captured it perfectly in one of her most famous works from 1989: Your Body is a Battleground. The human body is not merely a vessel for emotions; it is a political apparatus, capable of reflecting the contradictions of the society that surrounds it. As we write, the international conversation is focused on tens of thousands of young people from across Europe, whose bodies occupy public squares in numerous countries to demonstrate. From France to Italy, the tensions and clashes unfolding during these protests seem to define a new, almost performative, aesthetic. In this regard, consider the online buzz surrounding a young supporter of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: filmed at the March for Democracy in São Paulo, he went viral for his exposed muscles and a face wrapped in red fabric. His body — filtered through social media – became both the symbol of an ideology and an object of desire. Digital media play a fundamental role in shaping this battlefield. In the summer of 2026, we witnessed an extensive debate surrounding the male-dominated phenomenon known as "looksmaxxing" — an obsessive, dangerous pursuit of an absolute beauty ideal. This practice can involve even micro-fractures intentionally created in facial bones with a small hammer, in an attempt to reshape the face into a more "assertive" appearance. This debate was driven by reels and video content on Instagram and TikTok, giving rise to a phenomenon that bears the hallmarks of a cult. With its multiplicity of styles and approaches, art remains a privileged tool for reflection — a way to interrogate the contemporary world. And this audio guide is titled Still, the body because human corporeality, with its constant metamorphoses, remains a field we still wish to explore in depth. These audio guides have been developed for Artissima by Arteco’s mediators. This track has been written and curated by Daniele Licata. We are ready to go! Pause the player and go to Clivio, located in the Monologue/Dialogue section, green corridor, booth 5, to begin our visit. Press play once you have arrived. I’ll be waiting for you!

We are in the Monologue/Dialogue section, at the booth of Clivio, a gallery located in Milan and Parma. We present the work of Elio Mariani. In the contemporary era, the perception of the body is inextricably linked to how digital communication is shaping the concept of corporeality, fostering dynamics of homogenization that are algorithmic. These ideas are not foreign to contemporary art: consider, for instance, the moment in 1963 when Andy Warhol declared, "I want to paint machine-like". Or, consider the Mec-Art movement, brought to mind at Artissima by the presence of Elio Mariani — presented by Clivio in the Monologue/Dialogue section. Originating in France in the second half of the 1960s, Mec-Art was distinguished by its use of imagery from new media — such as cinema and television — as a starting point for works of art. Artists including Alain Jacquet, Pierre Restany, and Mimmo Rotella adopted this hybrid form of expression to depict the social changes of the era. Also part of the movement was Elio Mariani, an Italian artist born in Milan in 1943, who has always championed a highly original artistic practice. Confident in the potential of progress, Mariani employs the technique of photographic transfer — a process that involves moving or fixing an image (sourced from a negative, magazine, or newspaper) onto a different medium, such as an emulsion-treated canvas or a metal plate. Through this approach, the artist does more than simply produce a work; he articulates a distinct line of thought. Because the photographic transfer transforms the original image and introduces a sense of distance from it, an ambiguity emerges, sparking a reflection on how technology alters the reality we inhabit. As Mariani himself states, “it is not I who chooses the images; they are the ones that choose me”, highlighting an almost dangerous allure exerted by progress. By focusing on the processes that give rise to images in art, Mariani builds a bridge to contemporary discourse—a landscape in which bodies are produced, reproduced, and altered. We have completed our first stage. Pause your player and head to IMPORT EXPORT and eastcontemporary, located in the Back to the Future section, lilac corridor, booth 9. Press play once you have arrived. I’ll be waiting for you!

We are in the Back to the Future section, at the booth of both IMPORT EXPORT, a gallery located in Warsaw and London, and eastcontemporary, located in Milan. We present the work of Cathy Josefowitz. Born in New York in 1956 and having passed away in Geneva in 2014, Cathy Josefowitz created a highly diverse body of work over the years, driven by the ambition to transcend mediums and genres. Spanning drawing, painting, dance, and theater, the artist has worked ceaselessly in an attempt to represent the body as an expressive vehicle for individual experience. The body, in this view, is never a fixed form, but rather a repository of desire, vulnerability, and resistance. In the late 1970s, while studying dance at Dartington College of Arts in Devon, England, the artist encountered political activism, beginning to participate in marches, demonstrations, and conferences in support of feminist and queer liberation movements. From that point on, the political element systematically enters her work, taking the form of a reflection on how the female figure, in particular, can emerge and claim her place in society. Throughout her life, Cathy Josefowitz sought to bridge her painting with the sensory experience of living and traveling. This is evidenced by the numerous works she created on tablecloths, napkins, receipts, and postcards — reflecting a body that could not remain still and felt a compelling need to express itself during the most unexpected moments of daily life. Over the years, her practice became increasingly experimental; at one point, for instance, she laid out vast canvases on the floor and danced upon them, attempting to capture even the most ephemeral gestures through paint. This experimentation did not cease even after her breast cancer diagnosis in 2007: three years later, she began a series of paintings based on the ancient Indian text of Kamasutra, depicting couples defying the limits of gravity against expansive, monochromatic backgrounds. We have completed our second stage. Pause your player and head to Isabelle, located in the Disegni section, central corridor, booth 7. Press play once you have arrived. I’ll be waiting for you!

We are in the Disegni section, at the booth of Isabelle, a gallery located in Dubai. We present the work of Tirdad Hashemi. Born in Tehran in 1991, Tirdad Hashemi left Iran in 2017, embracing a state of perpetual motion that has taken her from her hometown to cities such as Istanbul, Paris, and Berlin. This inclination toward nomadism has profoundly shaped her artistic practice, which focuses on small-format drawings — a choice that allows her to continue creating regardless of her location, unencumbered by any material constraints. Hashemi’s works possess the symbolic quality of a dream. Created using materials such as oil pastels, they take shape through serpentine brushstrokes. The body is the favored subject, capable of shaping suspended dimensions where the memory of political events overlaps with personal traumas. The imagery — seemingly as gentle as a nursery rhyme — is, in fact, an attempt to evoke a country rocked by, a place where women’s voices yearn for a more inclusive society. Hashemi shows us that, in childhood, drawing is a language we all spoke — without exception — before the dynamics of social life began to constrain our capacity for expression in adulthood. In Berlin, Hashemi has created her own queer family; it is also there that she began collaborating with her partner, Soufia Erfanian — who is likewise an exile from Iran. Together, Hashemi and Erfanian produce drawings that strive to express an absolute intimacy. More recently, they have begun working on series centered on depictions of flowers, which, much like human bodies, gather and hold onto one another within unruly fields. These images draw inspiration from actual moments of care, symbolizing the ways in which a "chosen family" can be built. This is further evidenced by the titles of the individual works: long and poetic, they stem from a daily practice of letter-writing and reveal unexpected moments of reflection. We have completed our third stage. Pause your player and head to Vanguard, located in the Present Future section, central corridor, booth 8. Press play once you have arrived. I’ll be waiting for you!

We are in the Present Future section, at the booth of Vanguard, a gallery located in Shangai. We present the work of Che-Yu Hsu. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Che-Yu Hsu works primarily with video and technologies such as 3D scanning and virtual reality. Through a highly distinctive aesthetic, he revisits historical moments as well as private and collective memories. Vanguard’s stand at the fair serves as an excellent summary of the artist’s approach, featuring a selection of videos produced over the past year in collaboration with a forensic team specializing in 3D body scanning at crime scenes. In Catastrophism, the artist borrows a term from evolutionary biology—used to describe moments when evolution is reshaped by disasters—to argue that, in a society dominated by cataclysms and ecological disasters, the concept of catastrophe can no longer be separated from that of progress, particularly technological progress. The video shows a group of children twisting their bodies and crawling slowly, encircling another child. They clutch pebbles and stones, tossing them as if to bury him: in the process, the buried child recounts a story about the evolution of Homo Erectus, adapted from Thomas Moynihan’s book Spinal Catastrophism: A Secret History. Made in 2025 with the same technique is also Gray Room, inspired by the artist's ailment. In recent years Che-Yu Hsu has been bothered by unusual headaches, and after medical examinations, he was diagnosed with Diplopia—a visual disturbance that causes one to see two images of a single object instead of one. Starting from the premise that neuroscience today makes it possible to map (almost) all emotions and perceptions, the artist focuses on the concept of ‘spirit,’ offering a reflection on death and materiality. Working along a fine line between historical memory and the personal past, Che-Yu Hsu reshapes reality. The gray color that dominates his videos is only ‘flat’ on the surface; in truth, it conceals layers of meaning that the bodies within them gradually reveal. We have completed our fourth stage. Pause your player and head to Prometeo, located in the main section, orange corridor, booth 2. Press play once you have arrived. I’ll be waiting for you!

We are in the main section, at the booth of Prometeo, a gallery located in Milan and Lucca. We present the work of Regina José Galindo. Regina José Galindo was born in 1974 in Guatemala, a country devastated by years of civil war. Over the years, the artist has created performances that stem from a need to give voice to her deep distress regarding a hostile dictatorial regime — that, through censorship, restricts freedom of expression. While Marina Abramović uses performance as a device to test human endurance, for Galindo, the body serves as a vehicle for atonement and pain — channeling the wounds of an entire population. In El peso de la sangre, from 2004, the artist sits in the Plaza Central of Guatemala City and allows a liter of human blood to be dripped onto her, in a manner reminiscent of Chinese torture. At Artissima, Prometeo is presenting Homage to Latin America / Veiling, a photographic print documenting a performance from 2026. In it, the artist lies down — reminiscent of an Italian sculpture — with her body covered by a sheet soaked in the blood of South American men and women. In 1971, for the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil, Italian artists Scanavino and Cavaliere exhibited a work that included the names of 162 men killed by the South American military dictatorship imposed by the United States. This work was censored. Galindo’s tribute commemorates the participation and deaths of hundreds of women involved in the revolutionary movements of the era, recalling the bloody U.S. military interventions that took place in Central and South America during the 1950s and 1960s. In 2005, Regina José Galindo received the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale as the Best Artist under 35. We have completed our fifth and final stage: we hope you enjoyed it! If you want another perspective on the fair, go back to the InfoPoint or on the audio guides landing page, and select another podcast. Enjoy Artissima, and see you next year!