The Feminine and the Posthuman: “Fembot” at The Hole, Tribeca
Installation view of Fembot at The Hole, Tribeca. September 6th – October 22nd, 2023. Image retrieved from gallery website.
How does the female body engender the reconsideration of posthumanist figuration? In the group exhibition, Fembot, which took place at The Hole Tribeca between September 6th and October 22nd, 2023, gallerist Kathy Grayson, commonly considered to be a protégé of Jeffrey Deitch’s, who introduced posthumanism to popular culture, brought together feminine-presenting automatons to reveal the behind-the-scenes myth-making of a cybernetic future. The exhibition is ambitious, intellectual stimulating, and visually memorable. It is one of the exhibitions that leave the viewer with a train of afterthoughts beyond the immediate impact.
Installation view of Fembot at The Hole, Tribeca. September 6th – October 22nd, 2023. Image retrieved from gallery website.
Many walls in the gallery are clad with reflective aluminum sheets, evoking the sterile, cold, and technology-inspired aesthetics of many futurist movies. Technology and mediums that merge the human hand with digital influences constitute a major theme in this exhibition. For instance, Nicole Ruggiero’s Elegant (2021) is a 3D sculpture, animated to show a suspended robot head’s movement at the threshold of its own awakening. According to the artist’s website, these are “hand sculpted and hand textured,” in order to show “the power of the human form as an avatar,” evoking “feelings such as hope, strength, and the sublime.” The two paintings by Andrea Nakhla are displayed next VR headsets with 3D renderings as an extension beyond the 2D pictorial plane in the material world. Consider these alongside the 3D-printed PLA sculptures by Emma Stern, the kinetic sound sculpture by Erika Jean Lincoln, the AI-generated graphics presented by Olive Allen, and the NFT by Matthew Stone. The display, relentlessly showing “the next hot thing(s),” is undeniably exciting for those looking to not only see the art but also experience the art.
Jordan Homstad, Construction - 02, 2022, Oil, acrylic, and flashe on canvas over wood cradle, 63 x 63 inches.
But what do we really see? Different modalities of bodies—very unconventional ones. In most of the figurative paintings included in this show, vibrant color palettes are used to represent the alienation and biomorphism of the robotic body. The artists incorporate terrestrial animals’ fragmented body parts, marine organisms, and latex-like textures to portray women’s often nude or seminude bodies. For instance, in Construction - 02 (2022) by Jordan Homstad, there is a pronounced collage sensibility that evokes the visual language of German Expressionism. Veins, internal organs, a dental set, and eyeballs deconstruct the body of a cyborg that oscillates between life and death, human and machine. Kristen Sanders’s Shore/Self (2023) evokes a surrealist, uncanny visual vocabulary that includes motifs recurring in the artist’s corpus, such as seashells, mannequins, and obsolescent landscapes. The strange figure, with the shiny veneer eroding away to expose its mechanical structure, is intensely psychologically penetrating, as the imagery destabilizes how the conscious mind understands lifeless objects.
Aiste Stancikaite, Waiting, Still, 2023, Acrylic and oil on linen, 47 x 35 inches.
In Waiting, Still (2023), Aiste Stancikaite seduces the viewer with a beautiful ombré of violet and fuchsia. The playful juxtaposition of pink leather gloves with the exposed derrière elicits a surrealist contemplation of human desire, yet the white highlights that dot the right side of the canvas seems to suggest the artificiality of this painted skin. The viewer is reminded of the beautiful, provocative fembots in the Austin Powers series. According to Japanese roboticist Tomotaka Takahashi, due to technical considerations and the gender breakdown of roboticists, most robots would be “either machine-like, male-like, or child-like”; sometimes it is challenging to make fembots because “the servo motor and platform have to be ‘interiorized,’ but the body [of the fembot] needed to be slender.” One is left pondering why the fascination with fembots and with their corporeal qualities. Are they receivers of not only the male gaze but also the human gaze? Are they delegations of human existence into an unstable, cybernetic world that we cannot physically or intellectually navigate with ease?
Faith Holland, The Fetishes, 2017, Animated GIFs, faux sable fur on laptop, lipstick on iPhone, nail polish on iPad, moisturizer on iPhone, concealer on iPhone, pubic hair on iPad, lipsticks, makeup compacts, nail polishes, wires, powders, bronzer, blush, moisturizer, used bottle of lube, faux fur scraps, contact lenses, makeup brushes, eyeliner, lip liner, glass display case, 48 x 60 x 24 inches.
These themes of femininity, corporeal references, technology, and automation are epitomized in Faith Holland’s 2017 installation, The Fetishes. The shelf full of cosmetic products, wires, faux fur scraps, and GIFs projected on display screens is a potent reminder of an explosive messiness that characterizes the spectacle of modern-day technomania, optimistically. I quite liked the show because it is very much symptomatic of our present moment of information overload, which the exhibition fully embraces without accusing it of sensorial messiness. From the parade of innovative mediums to the overt fascination with robo-feminine bodies, Fembot at The Hole Tribeca celebrates our fetish-like interest in human-like machines, eliciting boundless imaginations as to what the next era in art might look like.
Installation view of Fembot at The Hole, Tribeca. September 6th – October 22nd, 2023. Image retrieved from gallery website.
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Participating artists of Fembot include Aiste Stancikaite, Amy Brener, Andrea Nakhla, ANTN, Auriea Harvey, Bryant Girsch, Caitlin Cherry, Céline Ducrot, Eleni Christodolou, Emma Stern, Erika Jean Lincoln, Faith Holland, Jesper Just, Ji Zou, Jordan Homstad, Katie Hector, Kristen Sanders, Larissa De Jesus Negrón, Malwine Stauss, Matthew Stone, Maya Fuji, Nicole Ruggiero, Nicolette Mishkan, Nyasha Madamombe, Olive Allen, Sally Kindberg, Salomé Chatriot, Samantha Rosenwald, Serwah Attafuah, SiiGii, and ThreeASFOUR.
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