The Body Implied: The Vanishing Figure in Soviet Art

Dodge Wing Lower Level

The Body Implied presents works of art made between 1970 and the present that feature partially obscured or hidden figures or instances where the human form is implied but not visible. In concealing the body, the artists in this exhibition explore a key tension: the body in relation to the state and the self. Although there was government censorship of art and literature in the Soviet Union, the works in this exhibition emerged from a period of greater artistic freedom thanks to Gorbachev’s glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) reforms. The artists used this newfound freedom to critique the Soviet regime and respond to political and artistic repression, which was often marked by violence.


Including works from the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection and the Claude and Nina Gruen Collection, The Body Implied incorporates installation, drawing, photography, sculpture, and video by twenty-two artists from Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. Examples of contemporary work recontextualize the permanent collection by demonstrating how these concerns continue to shape artistic expression in the present.

Organized by Stephanie Dvareckas, Dodge Fellow at the Zimmerli Art Museum and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art History at Rutgers University, in consultation with Jane A. Sharp, Ph.D., Research Curator for Soviet Nonconformist Art, and Julia Tulovsky, Ph.D., Curator of Russian and Soviet Nonconformist Art

Generous support was provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All Program.

The exhibition and brochure are made possible by the leadership support of the Avenir Foundation Endowment Fund, with additional support from the Dodge Charitable Trust–Nancy Ruyle Dodge, Trustee.

Some works that appeared in this exhibition were loans to the Zimmerli and therefore do not appear on this website.