Mother Tongue: Bodies Beyond Words is an immersive, multi-disciplinary exhibition that explores language from a feminist perspective, delving into its profound connection to the female body.
Language is a potent tool that both mirrors and forms our perceptions of the world including the female body. Just as language constructs complex meanings with words, bodies, too, are constructed; instead of words, they are constructed by society through power dynamics. In this exhibition, the body is activated and takes centre stage in a way that creates a new language that is not bound by the structures of patriarchal society, a poetic language in which multiple meanings prevail.
Mother Tongue is a feminist manifesto: It challenges, disrupts and subverts the status quo and interrogates patriarchal power dynamics inherent in language. Featuring a diverse range of works across the media of painting, sculpture, photography, video, text, printmaking, textile, performance and sound. This immersive experience invites viewers to participate in a multi-faceted dialogue that goes beyond spoken or written words, encouraging a new contemplation of the relationship between language and the body, in doing so, inspires us to reimagine and redefine our own ‘mother tongue.
Curated by Naj Shirazi