PRINCETON, New Jersey — In Carolee Schneemann’s 1964 movie “Meat Pleasure,” female and male our bodies spontaneously writhe in opposition to one another on a seashore in communal ecstasy as uncooked fish and chickens flop on their naked pores and skin. “Lollipop” (1958) by the Chordettes performs within the background, earlier than being intercepted by a hazy voiceover in French and English.
The earthy eroticism of the six-minute movie provokes fascination and disgust, and even led to an assassination try on the artist when it first debuted at a efficiency pageant in Paris. (She survived.) Right this moment, the 16mm movie glints on a wall at Artwork on Hulfish, Princeton College’s gallery and exercise house, as a part of the exhibition Don’t we contact one another simply to show we’re nonetheless right here?
The exhibition, named after a verse in one among Ocean Vuong’s poems, facilities the myriad methods contact shapes the human expertise, starting from the possessive love of a mom holding her baby to the violent and coercive contact that typically takes place between strangers. Throughout movie, pictures, and mixed-media artworks, 13 artists depict the heat, sensuality, and power of contact, exploring its relationship with nonhuman objects like clay and crops in addition to its resonance in forging intimate bonds and triggering emotions of attachment, abandonment, and affection.
In a piece from Lisa Sorgini’s sequence Mom (2016–22), splashes of sunshine dapple the floor of {a photograph} that depicts a girl sitting atop a mattress with a unadorned toddler pressed in opposition to her lap, the kid’s small hand digging into the tender flesh of her thigh. The inkjet print’s sepia-gold hue remembers the primal nostalgia of childhood, particularly the all-enveloping caress of a mom, a type of contact that’s wanted to outlive.
In Patrick Pound’s assortment of snapshots, a magician pulls a white-feathered duck out of a hat, a person wrestles a bear, and a tiny platypus rests within the palm of a hand. “Man turns into conscious of himself returning the look [of animals],” John Berger wrote within the essay, “Why Have a look at Animals?” (1980). What, then, might be stated about touching animals, whether or not vis-à-vis the management of domesticated pets or the facility wrestle with wildlife? Pound doesn’t provide any obvious solutions, leaving the viewer to evaluate the wonder and vulnerability of bodily contact between people and creatures whose language we can’t perceive.
Compared, Phoebe Cummings’s sequence of monochromatic movies, In the direction of a Flower (2023), captures her tactile experiments with inanimate objects like paint and clay. In a sensuous, virtually enjoyable movement, Cummings strokes massive swabs of white paint on the within of her arm, after which makes as if to pluck a wilted flower of the identical shade, suggesting that the physique, too, might be molded, damaged, and manipulated.
Because the exhibition makes clear, contact is essential to constructing relationships and discovering a way of neighborhood, a actuality that got here to the fore with the spatial distance necessities on the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Clifford Prince King’s “Protected House” (2019), a person carrying a beanie twists his pal’s hair into braids whereas one other mendacity on the mattress raises a joint to the primary man’s lips. Whereas their identities as queer Black males are deeply politicized, inside this room, there’s a resonance of calm stillness, an island away from the world.
The sensual intimacy of friendship likewise seems in Melissa Schriek’s brief video sequence Ode (2022), that includes two feminine associates interlocked in gymnastics-like poses, embracing at turns, suggesting that contact neutralizes loneliness and isolation, and deepens the bonds that maintain life. This ethos brings the exhibition’s title full circle — in all its mediations, contact certainly exhibits us that we’re nonetheless right here.
Don’t we contact one another simply to show we’re nonetheless right here? continues at Artwork on Hulfish (11 Hulfish Road, Princeton, New Jersey) by way of August 4. The exhibition was organized by Susannah Baker-Smith and Susan Shiny.