Taking Back Our Space: Photographic Perspectives

Marianne Wex's landmark 1972 photographic survey of gendered body language, presented alongside contemporary artists exploring how bodies reclaim public space.

Why go

Wex's foundational feminist work—covertly photographed people in Hamburg and rephotographed media images, organizing them by gesture categories—is shown in dialogue with seven contemporary artists (Faustine, Gutierrez, Hardy, Kihara, Minaya, Olowska, Red Star) who reframe the body-space relationship through Black, queer, and 21st-century feminist l

What to expect

Photographic panels and rephotographed collages organized by body position and gesture, alongside contemporary photography and video exploring physical territory, historical representation, and self-representation.

Things to know

• Wex began her visual survey in 1972 in Hamburg, observing how men and women were socialized to inhabit space differently.
• She organized photographs into categories: standing arms, sitting legs, lying down, and possessive holds.
• Exhibition brings Wex's watershed feminist project into dialogue with seven contemporary artists.
• Organized by Roxana Marcoci, Acting Chief Curator and David Dechman Senior Curator of Photography, with Caitlin Ryan, Assistant Curator.
• Located in The Paul J. Sachs Galleries, MoMA Floor 2, 2 South.
• Leadership support provided by the William Randolph Hearst Endowment Fund for Photography and The Marion Silverstein Slain Fund.

Plan your visit

Free with museum admission. Tickets available at visit.moma.org/select. MoMA is open today 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.