Bodies that Speak: Presenting Carina Chang

In our 28th newsletter, we invite you to take a closer look at the series Gaze by Carina Chang, presented in our current exhibition Bodies that Speak – Women Artists in Berlin.

As part of the exhibition section Bodies that Speak of Nature, Chang’s six oil paintings are displayed in the same room as works by Alma Sinai. The focus is on the female body and its relationship to the spaces, images, and social perceptions that surround it.

The works explore how female bodies are represented and viewed — and which social perceptions become visible in the process. In Gaze naked female bodies are depicted in small-scale paintings measuring just 18 × 24 cm. Unlike the often life-sized nude figures found in Western art history, these bodies do not recline on soft beds or among luxurious fabrics, but on bare, dark floors. They are stretched across the picture plane in uncomfortable, sometimes compromising poses. Some are cropped by the edges of the canvas or so tightly confined that they have barely any room to move. The restrained palette and rough, direct painting style heighten the sense of unease experienced by the viewer.

The title Gaze points to a central question raised by the series: How do we look at bodies, and what shapes our gaze? In her oil paintings, Chang explores the representation of the female nude in Western art history. She challenges what is known as the male gaze — the male perspective through which women become objects of observation. The female body is not simply depicted; it is imbued with meaning through social conventions and power structures. Orientalism also plays an important role in Chang’s work. She examines how sexualisation and exoticisation intersect, and how such attributions reduce people to particular roles. The artist is also interested in the narratives inscribed in our bodies, shaped by family history, migration, and colonialism, among other factors.

Gaze also turns the focus towards ourselves: What do we see when we look at a female body, and which images and assumptions shape our gaze? Chang’s paintings invite us to look more closely not only at the images themselves, but also at our own gaze.