Katarzyna Kozyra at East Hawaiʻi Cultural Center "Every Body Is All We Have"

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.