Exit Art.

Exit Art in New York City, a non-profit interdisciplinary laboratory for contemporary culture, is presenting "Body and the East," a survey of the history of body art performances in the Soviet Union and former Eastern Bloc from the 1960s to the present. Works that reflect a changing political environment are included in the exhibition which is organized into 14 sections, each representing a country in Eastern Europe. "Body and the East" explores the concept of "otherness" and the application of western ideals in the East. The performances took place in private apartments along with public spaces including youth centers, alternative galleries and student cultural centers. "Rather than focus[ing] on 'otherness' in this exhibition, we have examined this art from the vantage point of its cultural-historical characteristics, including those it shares with Europe," Zdenka Badovinac, Project curator and director of the Museum of Modern Art in Ljublijana, Slovenia, stated. "Certainly the work shown here bears a stron g relationship to the issues and ideas that have traditionally surrounded body art and performance art practices." The exhibition consists of over 200 body action and performance pieces that involve video and photography. Along with these media works, drawings, writings and other archival materials are included. Marina Abramovic in Yugoslavia, Karel Miler and Petr Stembera in the Czech Republic, the Post Ars group in Lithuania, Tibor Hajas in Hungary, Tadeusz Kantor in Poland, Komar & Melamid, the MOVEMENT GROUP and Alexander Yulikov in Russia are among the 80 artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Moldova, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia represented in the exhibition....