Labouring Bodies

Labouring Bodies explores the relationship between the body, labour and technology from a feminist perspective. The extensive group exhibition shows how the human body—especially the feminized and marginalized human body—has been shaped and controlled by machines since the dawn of the modern age, and how it has also been understood as a site of resistance. With its focus on working with machines, the technologization of production and reproduction, and women’s contribution to technological progress, the show invites us to rethink our notions of the body, labour and care. Spanning the period from the early twentieth century to the present, the works in the exhibition reveal parallels and underscore the ongoing relevance and topicality of the subject matter.

While critical theory in the west has focussed above all on the alienation and mechanization of the male industrial worker, feminist artists and writers have shown that feminized and marginalized bodies have always been particularly impacted by these processes. The philosopher Silvia Federici, for example, has shown how under capitalism women have endured multiple forms of mechanization: ‘Besides being subjected to the discipline of work, paid and unpaid, in plantations, factories, and homes, they have been expropriated from their bodies and turned into sexual objects and breeding machines.’

Tracing a historical arc, with works from the early twentieth century to the present day, the exhibition explores the relationship between body, labour and mechanization from a feminist perspective. The works address the exploitation of feminized labour (e.g. piecework, homework), new forms of precarization (e.g. delivery services) and the unpaid reproductive and care work involved in the gendered division of labour. 

The ‘labouring body’ is here to be understood not only as a working body but also as a body that gives birth in the sense of biological reproduction. In the context of demographic policy, women are reduced to the status of a physical resource in order to exploit their capacity to replenish the workforce. The focus is both on the care work essential to the capitalist economy and on the tendency to mechanize and automate the fields of reproductive and domestic labour, not least via an arsenal of technical appliances and applications.

Through specific technical devices and machines, the exhibition explores the gendered attribution of mechanical and repetitive work, at typewriters and photocopiers and in the production of electronic goods. It also looks at the underrepresented contribution of female labour to technological progress and addresses the interwoven histories of the loom and the computer industry. The exhibition traces these historical lines into the present, also looking at the invisible data work performed by millions of people around the world.

Artists: Berenice Abbott, Monira Al Qadiri, Rosa Barba, Clara Bausch, Alexandra Bircken, Daniela Brugger, Ursula Burghardt, Feliza Bursztyn, Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise, Helen Chadwick, Sella Hasse, John Heartfield, Pati Hill, Rebecca Horn, Juliana Huxtable, Doruntina Kastrati, Mary Kelly, Aurora Király, Kiki Kogelnik, Azade Köker, Suzanne Lacy, Magda Langenstraß-Uhlig, Alice Lex-Nerlinger, Ani Liu, Lee Lozano, Alexandra Navratil, Katja Novitskova, Ernestyna Orlowska, Frida Orupabo, Margaret Raspé, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Tabita Rezaire, Evelyn Richter, Niki de Saint Phalle, Marilou Schultz, Jean Tinguely, Doris Ziegler, et al.

Curator: Dr. Sandra Beate Reimann

Events
Performance, Glocken—Wolle after Margaret Raspé
July 16, 6pm, re-enactment with artist Clara Bausch

Artist lecture, The Then and Now of Marilou Schultz
August 29, 2pm, by Marilou Schultz, Diné weaver from Navajo Nation

Performance, Make Your Body Your Machine
August 29, 4pm, by and with Ernestyna Orlowska

The exhibition catalogue, illustrated in colour, includes a curatorial essay and short texts on the artists and works featured in the exhibition. Alongside the print version, the catalogue will also be available as a PDF that can be downloaded for free from the museum’s website from June 9, 2026.