Mika Tajima: You Be My Body for Me, 2023 / Art Basel 2023 Unlimited

Official description: In Mika Tajima’s You Be My Body for Me, architectural configurations of freestanding panes of ‘smart glass’ surround and partially conceal a group of rose quartz sculptures. Stand-ins for figures, the sculptures titled Pranayama refer to the ancient practice of connecting the mind and body through the breath. The glass panes – which change opacity through electric charges in its surface – are activated by the presence of a viewer that is then mediated through an algorithm mapping connections in social media feeds. In social media, the body is already elsewhere and nowhere: a substitute, outside of itself, evacuated, altered, enhanced, and illusory. Here the body is elucidated through translucent reflections, humankind is placed in relationship to others and connected by unimaginable forms.

Mika Tajima (born in 1975, Los Angeles) has a interdisciplinary practice that is based on profound investigations into the conditions of human agency and self-determinacy in built and virtual spaces. Tajima lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.