Body As Home/ Flagship Exhibition at GAD

Body as Home by Aleksandra Karpowicz

Premiering at the 58th Venice Biennale at the inaugural launch of the Giudecca Art District on 9th May

Curated by Miguel Mallol with performances by October! Collective

Project Space 1, Giudecca Art District

9 May – 15 September 2019

Press View 9 May at 12pm

Private View and launch party: 9 May 6:00 pm-11:00 pm

October! Collective performances across Venice:

6 May 1:00pm San Marco

7 May 3:00pm Giardini & Arsenale

8 May 5:00pm: Central Venice

Contemporary artist and film-maker Aleksandra Karpowicz has been selected to launch Venice’s first permanent contemporary art district, the Giudecca Art District, with her ground-breaking work Body As Home, alongside the British art collective October! Collective. Aleksandra is a Women of the Future award shortlisted artist, and the double winner of the National Open Art Competition (UK) for her three-year-long photography project Let’s Talk About Sex.

Aleksandra Karpowicz’s Body As Home will premiere on 9 May at the opening night of Giudecca Art District with live score and performances by October! Collective.

Curated by Miguel Mallol, Body as Home is a three-channel film presented in triptych that documents a journey of self-discovery, identity, migration and a search for the meaning of home. Filmed in 4 different cities; Cape Town, London, New York and Warsaw, Body as Home captures 3 protagonists in each city – a local, a visitor and the filmmaker herself in order to explore the concept of home in regard to geographical location, one’s placement within society, and personal identity.

The film explores how notions of physical selfhood and our sense of home overlap. Body as Home looks to address the relationship between human physicality, sexuality and identity and urge viewers to accept and feel at home in their own bodies.

“The way you feel in your skin informs the way you interact with your environment. The aim of this film is to address the relationship between human physicality, sexuality and identity and urge viewers to accept and feel at home in their own bodies.” – Aleksandra Karpowicz

Ahead of its grand opening at Giudecca Art District, during the Biennale on 9 May, Aleksandra and October! Collective will take Body As Home to the streets of Venice with drums and flags between 6-8 May where they will be doing series of live performances around the city in costumes designed by Muusa Italy.

October! Collective takes its name from the October 1789 Women’s March on Versailles a pivotal moment in the French Revolution when 7,000 working women took to the streets.  October! Collective was founded by London based artists Aleksandra Karpowicz (POL/UK), Fayann Smith (UK) and Isabella Steinsdotter (NOR).

October! Collective wish to create a platform through art that will harness the positive influence women can have on each other and the world to shift paradigms within culture. As three very different women, from completely different social and ethnic backgrounds, the hunt for commonalities in their adversity provided fertile ground for exploration. Their considerable body of work explores identity, the political landscape, myth, sexuality and the body.