Bodily Integrity at The Border Gallery

Lydia Nobles, Bianca Abdi-Boragi, Elizabeth Harney, Magdalena Dukiewicz, Georgia Lale, Christen Clifford, and Young Joo Lee

Curated by Jamie Martinez

August 12 – September 3, 2022

The Border Gallery is pleased to present Bodily Integrity—a group show exhibiting works by Lydia Nobles, Bianca Abdi-Boragi, Elizabeth Harney, Magdalena Dukiewicz, Georgia Lale, Christen Clifford, and Young Joo Lee curated by Jamie Martinez.  

Considering the political calamity revolving around the overturn of Roe V. Wade and the violation of human rights, it has become ever more imperative to express and consider the emotional and physical complexities surrounding the principle of bodily integrity. Altogether, the disparate pieces from the seven distinct artists amalgamate into an encompassing perspective that contemplates the themes of self-ownership and autonomy. 

Lydia Nobles’ sculpture Urvi, is named after and inspired by the story of Urvi—a mother of one who, after multiple miscarriages, finally finds luck until a medical issue leads to a difficult decision. The crib (made of acrylic, acrylic latex, brass, glass beads, polypropylene, resin, silk, steel, and wood) is accompanied by a film starring Urvi narrating her story. 

Magdalena Dukiewicz In This is my body, this is my Blood Magdalena Dukiewicz retransforms a found lamp—“a domestic object”—and creates a skin-resembling shade using hydrolyzed collagen, organic dyes, and her blood. With this grotesque, decorative object containing traces of her DNA she denounces the objectification of women in social and political life.

Bianca Abdi-Boragi’s Map (inkjet satin print on canvas) “explores the demarcation of a body; the history of a body as territory” and the way memory and history are concomitant to one’s life trajectory.

Elizabeth Harney’s Udder Control satirizes the domestication of cows and observes how “these powerful bovines” are subservient to humans when given the assurance of safety, even when violated and tortured. Harney sees herself in the cows “I guess I recognize myself in the cow’s desire to submit while also being critical of that.” The piece is constructed by hand-tooling on veg-tan leather.

Georgia Lale critiques the inadequacies of the United States’ approach to addressing healthcare. KENTUCKY, made out of hospital gowns and sewing thread, is part of her performance-activated installation DEFENSE. The piece questions the history, meaning, and sincerity of State mottos by positioning them directly on the intimate remnants of the ongoing healthcare crises—hospital gowns.

Christen Clifford’s We Are All Pink Inside: Interior #5 (my cervix 2014) is an HD Metal print of a photo of her vagina muscle and cervix taken with a sex toy camera. Her series Interiors: We Are All Pink Inside began with interior self-portraits and expanded to include trans, cis, and nonbinary bodies of different ages and colors.  Clifford’s practice centers on bodily autonomy, sexual education, and body politics by connecting trans and abortion rights. 

Young Joo Lee’s drawing “Choir” depicts a woman laying supine, legs open, giving birth to a “wardrobe” with three blanched-faced women beside her and a fish-netted figure in the foreground. The magical realist narrative integral to Lee’s works is concisely epitomized in the quote at the bottom of the piece: “I was giving birth to a wardrobe, when I heard people saying things like ‘her vagina is not squared enough.’” What she hears in this scene symbolizes patriarchal society’s expectations and control of women’s bodies that are unnatural and damaging to their self-image.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Lydia Nobles (b.1993) is a New York based multidisciplinary artist who investigates gender dynamics and abortion access. Her ongoing project, As I Sit Waiting, is a series of sculptures that each honor a true recollection of someone’s experience with abortion. Curated by Destinee Ross-Sutton, As I Sit Waiting will open in a solo show in September 2022 in New York City. As I Sit Waiting is also a fiscally sponsored project by the New York Foundation for the Arts. Select 2022 upcoming and current group shows include Lump, Border Project Space, Lyman Allyn Art Museum, Conn College, and Culture Lab. Select past group shows include Latchkey Gallery (2022), Cindy Rucker Gallery (2022), Field Projects Gallery (2021-22), The Real House (2021), Pink Noise Projects (2021), LoBo Gallery (2020), Trestle Gallery (2020), Practice Gallery (2019) and Westbeth Gallery (2017), among others. Her work is featured in Hyperallergic (2022) and Smack Mellon’s Hot Picks (Sept 2022). Nobles’ recently completed the artist-in-residence program at Field Projects Gallery (2021-22), Pink Noise Projects (2021), and Trestle Art Space (2020).

Born in Warsaw, Poland Magdalena Dukiewicz is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. With a multidisciplinary approach that is often site-specific, her practice is mostly process-based with a combination of material experimentation and method. Carefully choosing materials for their innate characteristics, she explores topics such as consumerism, environment, identity, and gender. Dukiewicz is a PhD candidate at the Complutense University in Madrid, where she obtained her MFA degree in 2013. Dukiewicz exhibited her solo projects at The Border Project Space (New York) and Stand4 Gallery (New York) in 2020. Her works have been included in group exhibitions in BioBAT Art Space and SciArt Center in New York, Camden Art Centre in London, Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA, Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, and were featured during Berlin Art and Science Week, among others. Dukiewicz is a recipient of the Nessa Cohen Grant for Sculpture and a grant from the Polish Minister of Culture and Heritage. She was a resident at the studio of Carlos Amorales in Mexico City and at the Bio Art Residency at SVA NYC. She is slated to have a solo exhibition at Ivy Brown Gallery in New York in the fall of 2022.

Bianca Abdi-Boragi is a French-Berber/ American interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Paris, France, who received her BFA from ENSAPC (Paris) and her MFA from Yale School of Art, Sculpture in 2017. Abdi-Boragi has been living in New York since 2010. Currently in residency at Pioneer Works her shows were reviewed on Hyperallergic, Artnet, Artspiel, ANTE mag, Taggverk Magazine, among others. Solo exhibitions include the Border Project Space Gallery and CADAF Art Fair, she has exhibited with SPRING/BREAK Art Show, the Flux Factory, Heaven Gallery Chicago, the Immigrant Artist Biennial, NARS Foundation, The Border Project Space, VCU Arts, NURTUREart Gallery, Chashama Gallery, Field Project Gallery, Galerie Protégé, The Clemente Soto Velez Center NY, throughout the United States and internationally and has screened art films at Anthology Film Archive, UnionDocs, Video Revival, NY, the Whitney Humanity Center, and Loria Center, New Haven, CT. Abdi-Boragi was the recipient of the JUNCTURE Fellowship in Art and International Human Rights from the Yale Law School and was recently in residency at NARS Foundation and previously at MASS MoCA’s studios, the Centquatre, Paris, France, Pact Zollverein, Essen, Germany, CalArts, Los Angeles.

Elizabeth Harney was born on a US military base in Enid, Oklahoma. Through her multi-disciplinary practice, she interrogates the ethics of sanctioned violence. Elizabeth received her MFA at Hunter College in 2019. In 2013 she received her BFA from New Jersey City University. She was a participant at Skowhegan School of Painting and Drawing in 2014, completed the SOMA summer program in 2017, and was a Key Holder at the Lower East Side Printshop residency in New York in 2021.

Georgia Lale is a Greek visual artist with Anatolian heritage. Through their multidisciplinary practice, Lale explores the human body’s blueprint on the social and political realm of contemporary society. They received their MFA from the School of Visual Arts, NYC, and their BFA from the Athens School of Fine Arts, Greece. Lale’s performance #OrangeVest was presented at the Greek Pavilion at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale.  They are the recipient of the Goulandris Foundation scholarship and the School of Visual Arts Paula Rhodes Memorial Award for Exceptional Achievement in MFA Fine Arts studies. Their work has been shown internationally, including New York City, Berlin, Venice, Brussels, Izmir, and Athens. Lale has participated in performance festivals, such as the Nuit Blanche Festival in Brussels, the Venice International Performance Art Week, and Art in Odd Places, NYC. Lale’s work has been exhibited in various New York City area galleries, including Smack Mellon, Shiva Gallery, The Border, and The Hole. They have been a panel member of academic conferences organized by the Dedalus Foundation, the MoMA Archives, the Yale History of Art Modernist Forum, and the Yale School of Management. Lale’s work is represented by the A.Antonopoulou Art Gallery in Athens, GR.

Christen Clifford is an artist working with photo, video, installation, writing, performance, and painting. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the writing program The New School, where she won the nonfiction award, and a BFA in theatre from NYU, where she won the Tisch Artist and Scholar Award. Her work has been seen in the group shows Abortion is Normal (Project for Empty Space, Newark and Eva Presenhuber, New York), Curriculum: spaces of learning and unlearning (EFA, New York), The Will To Change: Gathering as Praxis (Lyman Allyn Art Museum, CT), My Obvious Presence (Deak Gallery, Budapest), The Unseen (Quantus Gallery, London) and Queer Art for the Here and Now (PrideArt, NYC/Berlin) among others. Awards, fellowships, and residencies include: NYFA, NYSCA, Newark Creative Catalyst, 

Some Serious Business, Museum of Motherhood, Feminist Incubator. She is working on her first film, supported by the Independent Film Project (now Gotham) and Women Make Movies; she was an IFP Documentary Screen Forward Fellow.  She teaches at The New School and curates at Dixon Place. As a writer, she has published in The Guardian, Hyperallergic, Broadly, Filmmaker, and also the essay Mother, Daughter Moustache in the NYTimes bestselling anthology Women In Clothes and The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art.  Her first Risograph artbook, BabyLove, was acquired by the Thomas J. Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Selected press includes  3AM, Abortion Is Normal in Hyperallergic, Interiors in Hyperallergic and ARTFORUM, PussyBow in NYLON, Refinery29 and HuffPoUK. Clifford is a studio member at Project For Empty Space, Newark and she lives in Queens and online: www.christenclifford.info

Young Joo Lee is a multidisciplinary artist from South Korea, currently living in Cambridge and Los Angeles, USA. She holds an MFA from Yale University (2017) and from Staedelschule Frankfurt (2013). In her recent moving image works, Lee’s personal narratives as an immigrant, South Korean, and a woman interweave with the current and historical narratives to investigate the issues of alienation, discrimination, and mental illness in late capitalist society.

Lee’s works have been exhibited at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art- Seoul, The Drawing Center-New York, Curitiba Biennial, and GLAS animation festival, among others. Lee completed several artist residencies including Macdowell, Sanskriti Foundation, and Incheon Art Platform. She is currently a Harvard Film Study Center fellow and a resident artist at the Boston Center for the Arts. www.youngjoolee.net