In Touch

Until recently, a person might be said to be out-of-touch if they fail to follow current trends or generally misunderstand social norms. Though lately, the term describes our collective sense of detachment and unfamiliarity with the objects, places, and events that make-up our daily lives. Isolation has become an ironically shared phenomenon. Now after years of pandemic-induced distance and absence, it seems we are still relearning what to do with ourselves. One response to the lingering unknowing has been a return to the body as subject of creative inquiry. This exhibition gathers thirteen artists from across Ohio whose practices build from embodied knowledge and whose works navigate the unruly task of being, together.

Each piece offers a pathway back to sensation, physicality, and interpersonal connection. Beyond mere representations of human forms, the art objects, images, and processes express and magnify the artists’ lived journeys. In keeping with French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of perception and meaning making, these approaches recognize the body as our first interface with the world. Rather than reducing our sensorial and fleshy exchanges into a singularly knowable truth, artists like Amber N. Ford, Elaine Hullihen, Lo Smith, and Laura Swedenborg celebrate the unique traits that enable their survival. Through practices driven by deep self-compassion, their works interrogate established and emerging visions of beauty, labor, reproduction, and unwellness.

Works on view reflect the voids and interstices between us. Long before Zoom meetings and online classes, cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han wrote about the disappearance of rituals and the alienation resulting from our lack of play and physical encounters since entering the digital age. Artists Kate Budd, Kate Hampel, Yusuf Dubois Abdul Lateef, Sarah Paul, and Britny Wainwright embrace those once familiar behaviors through gestures of solace, resistance, and curious vulnerability.

The exhibition contemplates touch with ethical insight. In drawing from Luce Irigaray’s poetics of touch, it can be understood that consensual contact requires self awareness, mutual autonomy, and shared borders. That form of connection—what Irigaray calls a caress—may occur across any distance. For Hala Abubaker, April D. Felipe, Rebecca Nava Soto, and Pipo Nguyen-duy, the caress takes space. Their works mark the intense and intimate relationships we build without losing our sense of place and purpose.