In Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay “Is gender necessary?,” she states: “One of the essential functions of science fiction, I think, is precisely this kind of question-asking: reversals of a habitual way of thinking, metaphors for what our language has no words for as yet, experiments in imagination.” The works in the exhibition Under the skin energize Le Guin’s words and break away from presumptions of how a woman’s body “should” perform and be categorized. They are in dialogue with the aesthetics associated with body horror in film, addressing the antagonistic nature of the monstrous feminine.

In body horror, emotions fluctuate between disgust, grief, insecurity, fascination, and repulsion when the viscerality of the body is foregrounded in the messy nature of women’s biology. Notable examples include: Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession (1981), David Cronenberg’s The brood (1979), and more recently Jonathan Glazer’s Under the skin (2013) and Coralie Fargeat’s The substance (2024). These films, as well as many others, rely on our perception of femininity as reaffirming the vulnerability of the exposed female body. We see transgressions of bodily boundaries by devouring, penetrating, spilling contents, and destruction—transforming the female body into a grotesque spectacle.

Under the skin is a celebration of the flesh: mutations, hybrids, and manipulated beings as expressions of how the body can be re-written as a mode of feminist empowerment. The show looks at how abjection is articulated and can be redefined, examining child-birth, care-taking, and body reconfiguration. The works seek to dissolve binary differences and disrupt the social order around female signifiers. The show flips our final understanding of the monstrous feminine into a source of power rather than punishment.