Bodies of Knowledge

Clad in all-black, their faces obscured by oversized gorilla masks, “Frida Kahlo” and “Käthe Kollwitz” take to the streets as Guerrilla Girls to engage the public in their decades-long battle against discrimination in the art world. Animated sequences and archival footage illustrate the artist-activist collective’s fight for equality through posters with bold designs and other creative means.

Artist Anicka Yi runs her studio as if it’s a laboratory, developing hypotheses, testing them in small trials, and bringing in experts to help bring them to life as the idea is refined. Through footage of the studio and the installation leading up to an exhibition, we see the diverse disciplines she draws inspiration from, as well as the wide range of materials she works with.

Artist Hank Willis Thomas is at the unveiling of his sculpture, “The Embrace,” a monument celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, in Boston. Through this public artwork, he hopes to inspire people to reflect on the past with care and concern for the future, and continue to give people a sense of pride and connection beyond this lifetime.

Artist Tauba Auerbach is in their studio in New York City, creating drawings with a “knit structure,” sequences of a single gesture woven together on the page, challenging themselves to modify the rules without lifting the marker or draw from a specific part of their body. The trance-like state achieved in these intuitive and spontaneous drawings is the ideal space for the artist to think.

Finding inspiration outside the studio, a group of acclaimed contemporary artists use history, science, and politics as the raw material to create potent sculptures, paintings, drawings, and public works.