Exhibit examines body fears

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief the biological and physical threats our bodies face on a daily basis.

That confronting reality has been channelled by Berlin-based artist Marianna Simnett in Creature, an exhibition coming to Wellington City Gallery in March and featuring three of her most famous pieces – Blood In My Milk, Faint With Light and The Needle and The Larynx.

City Gallery director Elizabeth Caldwell says each work ‘‘captures the zeitgeist incredibly, with everyone’s minds being on the health of their body for the last year. We are provoked by these images that are at once repellant, but equally compelling in their intimacy.’’

Simnett doesn’t shrink from her material’s grisly nature; The Needle and the Larynx is an extended shot in slow-motion of the artist receiving a Botox injection into her larynx. Similarly, her work grapples with the macabre – Faint With Light is a sculptural installation inspired by her grandfather’s experience of fainting during a Holocaust execution, which saved his life. It features a 6-metre LED sculpture that pulses in time with the sound of Simnett hyperventilating, which was produced by repeatedly inducing her own unconsciousness.

But perhaps Simnett’s most challenging piece is Blood In My Milk, the exhibition’s centrepiece, which features a variety of insects, children, doctors and Simnett herself performing hallucinatory anxieties relating to the body and invasive procedures.

Simnett’s exhibition was most recently displayed at Brisbane’s Institute for Modern Art.

The institute’s director, Liz Nowell, says: ‘‘Marianna’s work is not just shocking. It’s whimsical, playful and fun at

times. It navigates all the complexity of our bodies.’’

Simnett’s work had a strong impact on Australian audiences, says Nowell. ‘‘Some people loved it, some disliked it, but everyone had a strong reaction to it . . . It wasn’t the kind of exhibition where people come away feeling neutral.’’

Creature will run at the Wellington City Gallery from March 4 to July 11.

Blood In My Milk – which features a variety of insects, children and doctors – is one of three featured works in Berlin-based artist Marianna Simnett’s upcoming exhibition, Creature.