Join Nina Wexelblatt, Curatorial Assistant, for an in-depth tour of A Body Measured Against the Earth on the museum’s second floor. The earth is both inspiration and instrument for the artists in this exhibition, who examine our physical and personal relationships to the land around us.

About A Body Measured Against The Earth

“Walking … is how the body measures itself against the earth.”*

The artists in this exhibition stage encounters between the earth and the body—the primary tool at their disposal—to understand the land and their relationship to it. Ranging from physical interventions in the ground to conceptual documentations of travel and labor, their divergent practices reject a totalizing or objective view of the landscape, instead favoring embodied investigations of specific places, histories, and ideals. In the process, the artists recognize land “not as scenery, but as the spaces and systems we inhabit, a system our own lives depend upon.” (Rebecca Solnit, As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art, 47.)

Titled after a quote from ecofeminist author and critic Rebecca Solnit, a body measured against the earth is drawn largely from the MCA’s collection. It takes inspiration from the ephemeral “earth-body” works staged by Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta in the 1970s and weaves legacies of land art and “walking art” with more recent work in conceptual photography and the moving image.

The exhibition is organized by Jared Quinton, Marjorie Susman Curatorial Fellow. It is presented in the Cohen and Stone Family Galleries on the museum’s fourth floor.

Vito Acconci (American, 1940–2017)
Jeanne Dunning (American, b. 1960)
Hamish Fulton (English, b. 1946)
Regina José Galindo (Guatemalan, b. 1974)
Maria Gaspar (American)
Nancy Holt (American, 1938–2014)
Richard Long (English, b. 1945)
Ana Mendieta (Cuban-American, 1948–1985)
Richard Misrach (American, b. 1949)
Dennis Oppenheim (American, 1938–2011)
Robert Smithson (American, 1938–1973)
Michelle Stuart (American, b. 1933)
Elizabeth M. Webb (American)
Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953)

**This event is free with museum admission, and Tuesdays are always free for Illinois residents.**

Image: Vito Acconci Stretch, 1969 Gelatin
silver prints, chalkboard spray paint, chalk, and marker on foam core
54 × 54 in. (137.2 × 137.2 cm) Collection Museum of Contemporary Art
Chicago, Gerald S. Elliott Collection, 1995.24 © 1969 Vito Acconci
Photo © MCA Chicago

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Tags: A Body Measured Against the Earth, Ana Mendiet, Carrie Mae Weems, Dennis Oppenheim, Elizabeth M. Webb, Hamish Fulton, Jeanne Dunning, Maria Gaspar, Michelle Stuart, Museum of Contemporary Art, Nancy Holt, Near North Side, Regina José Galindo, Richard Long, Richard Misrach, Robert Smithson, Vito Acconci