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The Arts Intel Report

Anu Põder: Space for My Body

Anu Põder, Lickers, 2007.

Feb 21 – June 30, 2024
Surpunt 78, 7542 Susch, Switzerland

In the 1980s and 90s, while working as a teacher in Tallinn, Estonia, Anu Põder started using mannequins and dolls to create sculptures of women. Some of them were quite jarring—lacking limbs, the bodies cut up like animal carcasses. In others the organs were replaced with architectural tubing. Põder achieved a bit of national recognition but when she died, in 2013, she was still little known. Now she is rising to posthumous fame for her uncompromising exploration of life in a female body. Forty works from 1978 to 2012 are on view in this exhibition. Many of them have never before left Estonia. —Elena Clavarino

Photo: Hedi Jaansoo/courtesy of Gianni Manhattan, Estate of Anu Pōder