MoMA Exhibition Explores Body Politics and Public Space Through Feminist and Intersectional Lenses

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York launched the exhibition Taking Back Our Space: Photographic Perspectives on 20 September 2026, running until 2 May 2027. The show centres on an influential feminist project that examined how gender and power are expressed through body language in public spaces, while also showcasing contemporary artists who extend this inquiry with intersectional perspectives.

The exhibition draws on a seminal work that organised images from books, newspapers, advertisements, and film stills by types of body language, revealing how patriarchal structures shape ‘female’ and ‘male’ postures. This foundational project is presented alongside new photographic works that explore the relationship between bodies, space, and identity through the lenses of race, colonialism, Indigenous sovereignty, sexuality, and self-representation.

Among the contemporary artists featured are Nona Faustine, who uses her body to highlight sites marked by histories of enslavement and racial violence; Martine Gutierrez, who challenges identity construction by merging roles such as artist and model; and Joiri Minaya, whose work critiques the exoticisation and commodification of Caribbean women. The exhibition also includes Yuki Kihara’s photographs of Indigenous Samoan fa’afafine models, which shift narratives from colonial perspectives to self-representation, and Wendy Red Star’s transformation of archives into spaces for living Indigenous memory.

Artists K8 Hardy and Paulina Olowska contribute works investigating how gender and identity are performed and rewritten through bodily gestures. The exhibition thus creates a dialogue between the historical feminist framework and contemporary artistic practices that address evolving complexities around public space and gender fluidity.

MoMA’s acting chief curator of photography, Roxana Marcoci, highlights that the exhibition not only honours the historical importance of the original feminist project but also establishes a critical framework that contemporary artists continue to test and expand. The issues identified over 50 years ago remain relevant today, having transformed and taken on new dimensions in ongoing political debates.

Taking Back Our Space offers visitors a chance to reflect on how bodies are choreographed in public spaces and how these performances intersect with broader social and political structures. The exhibition underscores the continuing evolution of feminist and intersectional perspectives in art and society.