Bodies and Cities: Imagining Alternative Relations with the Nonhuman

In this exhibit, three artists participate in the special feature on Rethinking the Human to join the reflection on what it means to be human in a multispecies world. Together, they explore and share their respective visions of the ways in which the human can be reimagined through the development of new perspectives on bodies and cities that acknowledge and partner with nonhuman universes at the individual and societal scales. In Gesine Marwedel’s work, human limbs are made to visually disappear in order to better reveal other shapes that interrogate both the nature of humanity and the place of humanity in nature, either by evoking closeness with the animal world or by highlighting what we believe makes us human—our mind. The body, enhanced by colorful paint, contorts in a staging technique that suggests that animals are part of us and we part of them. Marwedel also guides us into an interrogation about the essence of “human,” as she showcases the brain, which acts as a question mark in the face of the promises that artificial intelligence advances for possible posthuman futures, where our relationship with the nonhuman may well include robots. Like Marwedel, Emma Fay manipulates the body, not merely as a context for her painted sceneries, but to express the connections between the materiality of the body’s sensitive surface—the skin—and deep individual emotions, placing the bond between the corporeal and a natural imaginary at the core of what it means to simply be. By integrating natural elements into their apprehension of the outside world and their personal wellbeing, the models in her work here approach elements—water—and outdoor landscapes as pathways to equilibrium in their mental and physical health. Finding this balance, in particular through well-dwelling, is also the focus of architect and visionary illustrator Luc Schuiten, who creates stunning surrealist displays of urban vegetal utopias. In his skillful reinvention of the city between reality, dream, and science fiction, most viewers will remain enchanted by the creative and delightful details and the seemingly optimistic possibilism that every line translates. But some may also be troubled by the message his drawings carry about how disconnected from nature our urban living practices have become. His futuristic botanical rendering of recognizable or imaginary cities where buildings are constituted of living materials, which he calls “archiborescence,” is a reminder of what has been missing to bring us harmony in our interaction with the plant-world—and by extension with the natural world. His tree homes reconceptualize the city through an osmotic relationship between place, people, and the nonhuman. Although poetic and hopeful, his anticipative arboreal approach to the built environment and the oneiric atmospheres he produces can also strike as a botanical echo to a De Chirico like metaphysical gaze on the urban, emerging with a warning and call for action as human-made features are redesigned as branches, leaf veins, trunks, canopies, hedges, and where if stillness seems to dominate, change implicitly impends.

In adopting an eco-centric view, Marwedel, Fay, and Schuiten propose alternative understandings of the place of the human in a complex world where environmental degradation and the treatment of animals have become major stakes. As people seek balance through more collaborative ties with “other-than-human” realms, the three artists lend their talent to transform the visible, from which they invent a new reality and delineate aspirations, if not answers, to fix the incoherent relationships humans have maintained with the natural world. In the artists’ respective works, nature is no longer submissive and subjected, but plays out its agency away from anthropocentric hierarchies that position the human on top of all life forms. Marwedel, Fay, and Schuiten open the way for imagining organic futures that are more curious, inclusive, and respectful of all existences, and where humanity as we have constructed it around a nature-culture schism is challenged.

Fusioning corporeal, mental, and natural worlds

The models featured here, Joanne Alexander and Alvin Jarvis, are part of Emma Fay’s exhibit “Remedies and Reason” that uses body painting to explore deep, personal views of what wellbeing means to individuals and show that we all have our own understanding of what it means to be well. She worked with participants of the Community Learning Project (CLiP), the West Indian Senior Citizens Leicester Ageing Together Project, and members of the public to understand their impressions of wellbeing and mental health. After interviewing the participants individually, the artist portrayed their perceptions of mental wellbeing through the medium of body art. The exhibition was coordinated by Pamela Campbell-Morris and funded by the University of Leicester’s “Health Matters” community engagement project, thanks to the generosity of the Edith Murphy Foundation. Fay thanks the participants—in particular the models—as well as photographer David Wilson Clarke.