body options. we are airborne.
The video sculptures of artist Yvon Chabrowski invite viewers to engage with representations of the body. Chabrowski creates performative negotiation spaces in which movement patterns inscribed in the body, the roles we assume in society, and the relationships we form with one another are examined and set in motion. In her works, the artist reflects on body images.
For her exhibition body options. we are airborne. at Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Yvon Chabrowski expands her large-scale video sculpture WE HAVE A BODY (2019/2024) with visual elements that shift the direct experience of bodily poses. Floating, life-sized projections of the five performers—Martina Garbelli, Renen Itzhaki, Nasheeka Nedsreal, Jan Rozman, and Kareth Schaffer—invite viewers to enter a performative negotiation space and decide for themselves: Do I become part of this group constellation? Which movement patterns do I recognize?
In the second exhibition space, three recent video sculptures displayed on monitors primarily question one’s own position within a globally competitive and capitalist system. In KINESIS | GLITCH, the artist wraps her body in kinesiology tape, a material typically associated with healing and freedom of movement, yet here, it takes on a painterly aesthetic. The monitor screens exhibit cracks, and flickering color shifts disrupt the image. GLITCHED FILTERS | FLUID MASKS addresses facial filters commonly used in social media, which automatically overlay and fragment faces, thereby transforming the body. Have digital facial filters already become an integral part of our body image?
In GLITCH SURFACES | MAPPING RESOURCES, the breaking apart of screen surfaces itself becomes a dynamic image in which macro- and microscopic visual references shift in the viewer’s perception. Are these constellations of stars, a river delta, microscopic images of a cell nucleus, or is it simply a screen dismantled by the artist? And how can it be recycled to enable resource-efficient and fair production chains?
Yvon Chabrowski, born in East Berlin, studied photography under Timm Rautert and Florian Ebner at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig and at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon. She is a graduate of Peter Piller’s master class and is currently working on her PhD project MY AVATAR AND I. In 2019, the artist won the International Marianne Brandt Award in Chemnitz.
