The group exhibition Stretching the Body brings together a group of international artists who reflect on the genre of the portrait and on the theme of the human figure through the medium of painting. By distancing themselves from the canon of the representation of the female body in the Western pictorial tradition, the artists on show, through a variety of stylistic strategies, bring into play themes such as race, gender identity, power relations, memory and knowledge that passes through bodily experience.

Elongated or deformed, abstract or geometrically constructed, the body is at the center of artistic investigation and formal experimentation, and emerges as a contested space, of conflict between definitions and belonging, in which the limits between subject and object are continually called into question.

The exhibition includes works by twelve artists of different generations and geographical origins: Giulia Andreani (Italy, 1985), Louise Bonnet (Switzerland, 1970), Jaclyn Conley (Canada,) Celeste Dupuy-Spencer (United States, 1979), Jana Euler ( Germany, 1982), Mernet Larsen (United States, 1940), Wangari Mathenge (Kenya, 1973), Jill Mulleady (Uruguay, 1980), Christina Quarles (United States, 1985), Avery Singer (United States, 1987), Anj Smith (England, 1978), Ambera Wellmann (Canada, 1982), Rose Wylie (England, 1934).