MoMA Exhibition Explores Body Politics and Public Space Through Feminist and Intersectional Lenses

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York launched the exhibition Taking Back Our Space: Photographic Perspectives, running from September 20, 2026, to May 2, 2027. The show revisits and expands upon a seminal feminist photographic project that analyzed body language as shaped by patriarchal structures.

The exhibition centers on the influential work Let’s Take Back Our Space: ‘Female’ and ‘Male’ Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures, which organized images from books, newspapers, advertisements, and film stills by types of body language. This project highlighted how gender is socially produced through the choreography of bodies in public spaces.

MoMA’s acting chief curator of photography, Roxana Marcoci, frames the exhibition as more than a historical retrospective. She emphasizes that the show creates a dialogue between the original project and contemporary artists who use photography to explore the intersections of space, bodies, and identity politics. These artists bring intersectional perspectives attentive to race, colonialism, Indigenous sovereignty, sexuality, and self-representation.

Featured contemporary artists include Nona Faustine, who uses her body to highlight sites marked by histories of enslavement and racial violence; Martine Gutierrez, who challenges identity construction by merging roles such as artist, editor, and model; and Joiri Minaya, whose work critiques the exoticization and commodification of Caribbean women. Other contributors are Yuki Kihara, focusing on Indigenous Samoan fa’afafine models to shift narratives from colonial to self-representation; Wendy Red Star, who reclaims archives as living Indigenous memory; and K8 Hardy and Paulina Olowska, who investigate ongoing performances of gender and identity through body and gesture.

The exhibition underscores that questions of public space and gender fluidity remain central in political debates today. The issues identified by the original project 50 years ago have evolved but continue to present complex challenges. According to Marcoci, the exhibition not only reaffirms the historical importance of the original work but also establishes a critical framework that contemporary artists continue to test and expand.

Taking Back Our Space offers visitors an opportunity to reflect on how bodies are positioned and perceived in public spaces, encouraging a nuanced understanding of identity, power, and representation through photographic art.