© 2025 Hawaiʻi Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Every Body Is All We Have

Every Body Is All We Have

Exhibition On-view: June 17th - August 25th, 2023
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Friday, 10am–4pm & Saturdays 10am–2pm.
Featuring work from Reem Bassous, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Katarzyna Kozyra, Sue Schroeder, Jennifer Scully-Thurston, and Maga Ćwieluch.

In 1641, Rene Descartes described dualism, the long-held belief in a separation of mind and body – the idea that thought can exist outside of the body, that the body cannot think. Contemporary neuroscience has reassembled mind and body, clarifying the inextricable link between the thinker and the thought; a gut feeling is truly experienced in the gut; heartache happens to organs; feeling, thinking and being exist in every extremity of our bodies.
Historically the body has been objectified, sometimes perceived as the source of all evil, at other times the seed of holiness. In medicine, biology, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, chemistry and physics, the body is examined and analyzed on the basis of norms and deviations, divided into modules and domains like skin color, nose shape, sexual designation and function. Bodies are adorned, mutilated, tattooed, tortured, cherished, excluded, or ignored.
The body is researched, but is also that which researches. It is exalted, hated, or shrouded in taboo – advertised in its physical strength, powerlessness, even illness – put up for sale, perfected in beauty, contorted as a means of expression, spoken of and spoken to, as in body language.
Philosopher and feminist theoretician Rosi Braidotti suggests that heart transplants, sperm banks, organ and tissue cultivation, limb lengthening, and face lifts signify a fragmentation of bodies in the age of biotechnology. She describes the phenomenon as "organs without bodies."
“Every Body Is All We Have” presents artists’ experiences of the body, sometimes personal, sometimes alien: syntheses of self and other, of mind and body, of matter and thought – dualism simultaneously belied and celebrated.

East Hawai'i Cultural Center
10:00 AM - 04:00 PM, every day through Aug 25, 2023.

Event Supported By

East Hawai'i Cultural Center
808-961-5711
admin@ehcc.org
East Hawai'i Cultural Center
141 Kalakaua Street
Hilo, Hawaii 96720
808-961-5711
admin@ehcc.org