“Overexposed: Art, Technology, and the Body” - MOMI (2026)

by Anshuta Jadhav

Visiting this exhibition, it was fascinating to see how it dug into how technology has reshaped the way we look at bodies, cameras, screens, medical imaging and a lot of it zeroed in on women specifically being watched and put on display without much say. Felt like the whole point was that "exposure" was never neutral and that the women have always gotten the worse end of it. 

A couple pieces stuck with me. Opera Medica (2025) by Agnes Questionmark, drew on medical imaging and body modification imagery to explore themes of transformation and the body as something constantly redefined by the tools used to view it. It added a more speculative edge to the show, pushing past just critiquing the medical gaze into imagining new ways of existing within it. In Barbara Hammer's Sanctus (1990), she took old X-ray footage originally shot decades earlier and recolored and re-edited it into something almost meditative, watching a body walk, swallow, move, stripped down to just bones and organs in motion. It tied right into the show's whole argument: medical imaging claims to be objective, but the second an artist gets their hands on it, it becomes something else entirely, personal, political and emotional. 

What I appreciated was that there were pieces by women artists who also reclaimed the camera, using the same technology to show themselves on their own terms. That tension, between being exposed and choosing exposure, felt like the real heart of the show.

The Museum of Moving Image; Overexposed (Art and Technology)

     Stepping into the gallery I first noticed the stark absence of natural light, cuing me in to the artificial nature of the theme. The gallery opened with X-Rays, mainly I think to open up the discussion of what we are generally familiar with seeing and what we as the audience should be fascinated with "revealing". At first the pure fantastical amusement beyond the initial scientific breakthrough was shocking, as I am so familiar with X-Rays as a strictly medical practice that I did not even connect the dots to the "peepshows" on display. I felt a certain willingness to be amazed and join the spectacle of the naked body. Naked Truth, the spectacles on display that were to be used to look up a woman's skirt, was the first clue to me. We as the audience are viewing these X-Rays in a feminist manner, reflecting on the male gaze and that particular view of the nude. This idea began to rapidly tie into every other display, starting with the experimental films. Grandmamauntsistercat, the surreal collaged film featured a hodge-podge of a women's collective life and functions juxtaposed with domestic machinery recreating procreation. The experience of this gallery was entirely strange and at times deeply uncomfortable. I felt the purpose of the pieces were almost to find a mechanical alternative/replacement for women's suffering, searching for a sexuality unexploited by the patriarchy. At the same time I believe there was a small victory of humanity, a celebration of life. Nurses complaining, partying, chattering away to one another, finding comfort together, maybe a silver of hope for our society.