OXFORD.- Movements for Staying Alive brings together new commissions alongside recent and historical works that value the importance of movement as a means to learn, connect, and foster a sense of community. Rather than focusing solely on visual experience, this exhibition encourages you to engage with the artworks through your body. Together, the artworks create an environment that prioritises the bodily experience of the space, ideas, and artwork, rather than privileging sight over other senses.

From the movements that quite literally keep us alive – the flow of blood through our bodies and the flux of our organs and cells – to the interactions and connections that make us feel alive, this exhibition celebrates the fundamental movements of life.

Together, the artworks on display highlight the power of movement as a source of knowledge, creativity, and community. Resisting the rigidity in which bodies are oOen socially and politically coded, these artists offer a context for exploring embodied ways of experiencing the world.

Movement artist Sandra Reeve developed the idea of the ‘ecological body’ as one which “experiences itself through movement as part of a changing environment, rather than a static isolated individual”. Drawing on this idea, Movements for Staying Alive invites us to reflect on how we move in relation to each other and the world around us. How we sit, stand, pause, play, or walk through a space creates this shared, responsive environment.

Ana Mendieta and VALIE EXPORT’s works can be seen in conversation with each other. They consider the relationships between people, bodies, and both natural and urban environments, exploring the tensions and boundaries that exist there. In UNLEARN THE BODY (2021), Panteha Abareshi uses their mobility aid in deliberate, slow gestures, negotiating and reframing how we might think about ability, movement, and control. Together, these works challenge rigid assumptions about how bodies are supposed to behave, and suggest new possibilities for how we occupy space.

The exhibition also considers how our relationships with our bodies have shiOed in recent years. Social distancing and the resulting mistrust in bodies moving together in space has leO many people feeling socially, emotionally, and physically disconnected. This has been compounded by our reliance on digital technologies, which simultaneously connect and disconnect us, inadequately replacing the experience of being in a shared space together.

New works by choreographer Jane Castree challenge this lack of connection, and invite us to consider how even small physical shiOs can open up new perspectives. Her work reflects on how movement can challenge fixed ideas and binary thinking, encouraging more open, fluid ways of being with one another.

Harold Offeh’s work also considers the potential for change through movement. Joy Inside Our Tears (2021) reflects on how dance and collective movement can be a form of joy, solidarity, and community activism. Offeh describes social dance “as resistance, as transgression, as a form of agency”, acting as a common language that helps us to move through challenging moments with collective joy.

Similarly, Leap Then Look’s new work, Shaping (2025), emphasises movement as a place for shared ideas and connections, reflecting how the peripheral movements of others can impact our own journey. Their installation, developed collaboratively with young people, inspires play and inquisitive interaction with the space. The gallery spaces themselves are environments co-created with the bodies that inhabit them.

Yvonne Rainer’s works consider the impact of our motions and gestures on others, celebrating how intentional, purposeful, and meaningful even small movements can be. These works highlight the enduring relationships between our bodies and the spaces we co-create together.

The exhibition continues downstairs where Baum & Leahy’s Sensory Cellumonials (2021) in our Studio invites you to connect on a cellular level. Alongside sensory activities in this creative space, their interactive video work offers a chance to slow down and connect with our own bodies through the unconscious movements that keep us alive.

In the Ground Floor Gallery, Estampa, a Barcelona-based collective of programmers, filmmakers, and researchers, have drawn inspiration from Modern Art Oxford’s history of participatory and movement-based practices. They have explored the physical history of the gallery - not just through the archival content, but in the bodily processes of organising, handling, and documenting it. Their use of artificial intelligence brings the archive to life as a ‘living body’, ever-shiOing and shaped by the people who engage with it.

You are invited to move through the exhibition in your own way, encountering others as you go. The artworks are a reminder that all bodies and environments are constantly in motion and together we play a generative role in sharing and understanding knowledge. Movements for Staying Alive celebrates the vital movements of life, which all give way to potential, choice, connection, and exchange.