What happens when irritation becomes both a bodily sensation and a political method? What does it mean for a body to be considered a problem? 

Bringing together works by artists from Aotearoa and abroad, this group exhibition explores the frictions between lived bodily experience and the systems that seek to regulate it. Exploring what happens when bodies do not behave as expected, when medical systems fail to accommodate them, when the dominant society chooses to ignore their needs, and when discomfort becomes a source of knowledge, resistance or collective connection. Irritation or discomfort does not always need to be cured, explained away or converted into resilience. Sometimes it reveals that the problem lies not in the (female/crip/queer) body, but in the structures around it: From the historical tendency to treat women's anger as a medical or psychological disorder, and queer communities' alternative medical histories to disability, inaccessible environments and the artificial promises of bodily perfection and sanitization, the selected artworks question who gets to define what is normal, healthy or acceptable.

Politics of irritation focuses on the relationship between bodily discomfort and the systems that organise everyday life. Here, irritation is more than a symptom: it is never an individual “problem”, but a persistent disturbance that exposes structures of power, generates alternative forms of knowledge and opens up possibilities for collective care. In the exhibition spaces, the notion of “irritation” appears as unruly bodies, who leak, react, speak, desire, refuse, malfunction or exceed boundaries.

Image Credit: Oliver Husain and Kerstin Schroedinger, DNCB, 2021. Installation view, GTA24 at MOCA Toronto, 2024. © and courtesy the artists. Photo: LF Documentation.