Tai Shani works with painting, sculpture, installation, and film to explore the politics of emancipation through a feminist lens. A prolific writer, Shani draws on sources including punk rock, cult cinema, Greek mythology, feminist theory, and science fiction. For her first US solo museum exhibition, she has made a feature-length film, My Bodily Remains, Your Bodily Remains, and all the Bodily Remains that Ever Were and Ever Will Be (2023). The film makes use of emotive effects and passages of digital animation to explore the often overlooked connections between leftist resistance movements over the past 150 years. It oscillates between depictions of a society plagued by isolation, greed, and fear on one hand, and investigations of eroticism and pleasure as catalysts for radical change on the other.

To accompany the film, Shani has produced a floor-based installation resembling an inverted Medieval ceiling, accessorized with an array of artifacts—pearlescent spheres of various sizes, handcrafted ceramic hands, and a reliquary—that refer to the film and various literary sources. Suspended above it and on the adjacent wall will be fragmented architectural forms—columns, an altar, and circular discs—that further emphasize Shani’s interest in conjuring immersive dream-like environments. Drawing on queer and feminist theory, and political ideologies of collectivism, the exhibition ponders love as a device for healing and resistance.

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Annual exhibition support is provided by Gale and Dave Beckett, BelFlex and Jason McCaw, Barbara Weston Sasser and Carol Weston Roberts, Ronnie and John Shore, Helen and Brian Heekin, Barbara Myers, and the generous contributors to the CAC Exhibition Fund. General operating support for the CAC is provided by ArtsWave, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, P&G Fund, and the Johnson Foundation.

Artist

Tai Shani

Curated by

Curated by Amara Antilla, Curator at Large, with assistance provided by Erin Adelman, Curatorial Assistant