Spanning centuries and sensibilities, this major exhibition delved into the mystery and materiality of the body in art.
Courtesy of Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection.
From March 20 to August 25, 2025, the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection in Paris staged the ambitious group exhibition ‘Corps et Âmes’ (‘Bodies and Souls’), offering a poignant and powerful meditation on the human body as a site of vulnerability, transformation, memory, and desire.
Curated from the Pinault Collection’s vast holdings, the exhibition unfolded across the museum’s spaces—its Rotunda, galleries, and lower floor—bringing together over 100 works that explored the body in all its states: sacred, sensual, political, fragmented, and abstracted.
The Living, Breathing Body of Art
Rather than adhering to a strict chronology or theme, ‘Corps et Âmes’ embraced fluidity and dialogue among artworks, periods, and media. The exhibition traversed classical figuration and contemporary installation, inviting visitors to experience the body not as a static subject, but as a field of tension—between flesh and soul, power and fragility, individuality and universality.
One of the most striking highlights was David Hammons’ Untitled (Body Print) (c. 1970), a haunting silhouette composed of grease and pigment, capturing the literal impression of the artist’s body while evoking the history of Black visibility and resistance. Nearby, Louise Bourgeois’s Fillette (1968) provocatively merged the erotic and the abject in a suspended latex sculpture that blurred the boundaries between gender and form.
Also on view was Alina Szapocznikow’s work from the 1960s and ‘70s—startling casts of her own body in resin and polyurethane—that bore witness to illness, survival, and the pursuit of beauty in decay. Her hybrid sculptures glowed with an unsettling tenderness, as if the body had become both relic and revelation.
Matter and Metaphor
Throughout the exhibition, the artists’ material choices underscored the themes of transformation and embodiment. Fabric, wax, marble, silicone, hair, and bronze became vehicles for emotional and political resonance. Lynda Benglis’s wax pours mimicked viscera and flesh; Paul Thek’s Technological Reliquaries trapped simulated meat inside Plexiglas, reflecting Cold War anxieties around death and preservation.
The lower galleries offered an introspective shift, with works that dwelled on absence, silence, and the ephemeral. Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s minimalist installations—such as a softly glowing light string or a diminishing pile of candy—invited viewers to experience loss and intimacy on a bodily scale. Ana Mendieta’s photographs of her Silueta Series, where her body appears and disappears into earth, fire, and blood, reinforced the notion of the body as a spiritual conduit, inseparable from land and ritual.
A Cathedral of Contrasts
Presented under the monumental dome of the Bourse de Commerce, ‘Corps et Âmes’ achieved a heightened resonance. The circular architecture echoed the cyclical themes of life, death, and renewal embedded in the show’s curatorial vision. Rather than shying away from discomfort or contradiction, the exhibition embraced them—placing pain alongside ecstasy, exposure alongside concealment.
By giving equal space to canonical and lesser-known voices, including artists from across the Global South and historically marginalised communities, the exhibition extended the scope of corporeal representation beyond the Western gaze.
A Legacy of the Body
‘Corps et Âmes’ continued the Bourse de Commerce’s commitment to thematic exhibitions that make bold use of its historic architecture and draw deeply from the Pinault Collection’s contemporary acquisitions. The show resonated with current global conversations around identity, gender, vulnerability, and resistance—yet it remained grounded in the eternal question of what it means to inhabit a body.
In a time of shifting certainties and heightened embodiment—from digital dislocation to political protests and public health crises—this exhibition offered a profound and moving reflection on our shared, fragile, and resilient human condition.
For more information, please visit the Bourse de Commerce.
