The New Subject. Mutating Rights and Conditions of Living Bodies at Oksasenkatu 11 is the third exhibition out of four under the umbrella of
The New Subject project initiated and curated by the curatorial duo TOK. This travelling series of exhibitions and public events explores the challenges of the body in connection to global biopolitics and technological developments, focusing on the legal, somatic and cognitive dimensions.
The New Subject is inspired by the ideas of Achille Mbembe, who argues that today’s societies of control rely on the "manufacture of a new subject that is at once a physiological assemblage, a synthetic and electronic assemblage, and a neuro-biological assemblage", the project aims to decode and expose the repressive and manipulative mechanisms incorporated into various constituents of the contemporary state and society. By examining the body as a contested site for ideological and political power games, the exhibition series also aims to explore potential modes of existence that defy the coercive machinations of state engineering.
The two previous project exhibitions at Konsthall C in Stockholm and Kunsthal NORD reflected on state and corporate strategies of body instrumentalization, as well as the evolving social constructs of physical and psychological norms and deviations.
The exhibition at OK11 explores queer and trans rights, bodies, and experiences specifically in the context of state legal and health policies. It contemplates how current systems and institutional structures often discriminate against and fail to empower those identifying beyond the gender binary. Some of the presented works envision diverse possibilities of post-human and non-normative modes of reproduction, while others critically examine the concepts of desire, otherness, and gender normativity within a sexualized economy or a patriarchal society benefiting from enforcing traditional gender roles and divisions.
