The human body, nude. The exhibition showcases it from a variety of beautiful, subversive and experimental perspectives, aiming to challenge the traditionally dominant male gaze in a celebration of the human body in all its forms. NUDE is a commentary on, and reflection on, art history’s traditional fascination with the naked (often female) body. The balance and space between “nakedness” as a purely aesthetic motif versus a sincere, natural and personal artistic expression is explored through 30 different works. The exhibition, comprising over 200 photos, films and installations, offers a multi-faceted view of the importance of the body in modern times, how it is used and what it can tell us from a global and female perspective.

Unlike painting, photography is not a medium that has been “owned” by men for centuries. Throughout the history of art, mainly through traditional painting, we have been presented with a narrow type of nudity, a canon that has mostly been directed and depicted by men, for an audience of men, and where the subject has not too rarely been a woman, or only a woman’s body. NUDE is a reflection on this state of affairs. We present 30 female artists from 20 countries around the world who use the naked body as their medium in their art. Whether it is their own or other people’s bodies, for the sake of art, for the sake of beauty, as representation, self-expression, as subject and object! They all become examples of a new or different nakedness in our time.

– Johan Vikner, Director of Global Exhibitions, Fotografiska.