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Anu Põder: Space for My Body is the first major retrospective exhibition of Estonian artist Anu Põder outside of her native country. Taking its title from one of Põder’s sculptures, the exhibition brings together more than forty works, dating from 1978 to 2012, that have rarely been seen internationally.

Põder is one of Estonia’s most revelatory voices of the last five decades. Her work has stood out since the 1970s as uniquely crafted, originally conceived and deeply personal. She is known for exploring the human body, highlighting the fragility, impermanence and ephemerality of life in a series of highly evocative sculptures.

Throughout her career, Põder employed unconventional materials such as textile, wax, burlap, soap, plastic, fat and linoleum to compose delicate assemblages. Unlike her peers, who were working with traditional materials such as bronze and stone to portray Soviet society’s ideals, the artist built out her own intimate, highly vulnerable visual vocabulary made of everyday, non-precious elements. Working on the cusp of two major eras – the Soviet occupation of Estonia, which began in 1940, and the new independence gained in 1991 – Põder embraced the uncertainty of identity of the Estonian people, working as one of the very few women artists in a decidedly male context and focuses on female subjectivity alongside other international artists such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Louise Bourgeois, Ana Mendieta and Alina Szapocznikow.

Installed in a loosely chronological order, the exhibition centres on three major aspects of the artist’s oeuvre. It begins with a display of dolls, mannequins and torsos that compose the main characters of Põder’s imaginary. A large group of works spanning from the late 1970s to the early 1990s feature the female body as the centre of her artistic investigation. Pushing the traditional limits of figuration, Põder composes powerful assemblages of amputated, decaying bodies, made from highly unusual materials such as plastic, burlap, wool and epoxy. These works are sensual and erotic, yet also violent: they depict fragmented, amputated female torsos that intersect with amorphous appendages. The second part of the exhibition focuses on the role of garments as stand-ins for the body. In the 1990s, Põder realised a highly evocative and poetic body of work which includes coats, jackets and bags that have been altered, cut open and dissected.

The image of the body is no longer present but is substituted by its ghost appearance through these vestments, generating a negative space that hints at the figure without ever fully portraying it. The final section of the exhibition features Põder’s late work and focuses on her relationship with senses, nourishment and desire. Works in this section employ or evoke food as material, welcoming the ephemeral life of these elements that can deteriorate, change and disappear.

Installed in the spectacular site of the Muzeum Susch against a breath-taking alpine land- scape, the exhibition Anu Põder: Space for My Body sheds light on the outstanding work of an artist who is still too little-known outside of Estonia.