Opening Wednesday 23rd April, 6pm, with a talk between the artists and designer Viktoria Juretko

Saturday 26th April 6pm, Performance with Belén Coluccio 

la_cápsula, Anwandstrasse 9, 8004 

 

Since 2023, artists Franziska Baumgartner and Cinthia De Levie have worked together in a project that investigates, questions and re-interprets a series of objects from the medical collection of the University of Zurich, one of the most important medical collections in Europe, with objects dating as far as the 17th century. For the artists, it was the objects that represent or regulate the female body (or bodies with uterus) and its internal organs which caught their attention. These medical devices are foreign bodies that are either inserted into, or simulate a specific part of the female body. As much as they were designed to protect, support, hold, correct or explain the female body (in its normative definition), they also penetrate, hurt, objectify, control and restrict it to a great degree. 

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Questions around the violence inflicted on female bodies/bodies with a uterus by medical procedures, medical objects or even the language used by the discipline are at the center of the exhibition, but are not its only angle. By delving into the materiality, the function, the history and the politics of these medical objects, the artists re-negotiate the boundaries between intrusion and permeability, pain and pleasure, detachment and connection.

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*During the opening, on Wednesday 23rd of April, the artists will be in conversation with Victoria Juretko, an industrial designer based in Basel, whose Masterprojekt was an investigation an re-design of the speculum. ​

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