Exploring Intimacy and Identity in Some Bodies at the Roxbury Arts Group

Curator Ursula Haden, Creative Opportunities Coordinator at Roxbury Art Group receiving praise for an amazing group exhibition ‘Some Bodies’ comprised of 33 female artists.

By Robert Brune

ROXBURY — The Roxbury Arts Group’s latest exhibition, Some Bodies, is an ambitious and poignant exploration of the human figure, intimacy, and identity. Bringing together thirty-three artists, this multidisciplinary show spans painting, photography, textiles, sculpture, and video, asking timely and timeless questions: What does it mean to be human? How do we connect with others emotionally and physically? What does it mean to be seen, or objectified? And what makes a body ‘somebody’?

At its heart, Some Bodies challenges conventional representations of the human form by focusing on the tension between subject and object, a conversation that has long shaped the history of art. The curatorial impulse of Ursula Haduk behind the show stems from research into the reclining nudes of Matisse and Modigliani, which highlighted a persistent problem in art: the tendency to objectify the body, especially women’s bodies, stripping subjects of their agency and interior life. In this exhibition, the curatorial framework seeks to re-center the figure as both seen and seeing, as both body and being.

A Glimpse of the Artists

Jessica Farrell’s dreamlike paintings are a profound embodiment of this mission. Her work fuses the mythic with the rural, tapping into the interconnectedness of all living things. Through lush depictions of nature and myth-infused figures, Farrell’s pieces offer a vision of the human condition that is both grounded and spiritual. There is a quiet reverence for the body as both vessel and presence, echoing themes of vulnerability, strength, and communion with the natural world.

Cena Pohl Crane’s paintings, on the other hand, vibrate with emotional and chromatic intensity. Her bold, expressive brushwork reflects a restless dissonance with contemporary life. Her figures, often dissolving into their surroundings, articulate the internal fragmentation experienced in a digitally saturated society. The body, here, is both a site of resistance and collapse, especially under the pressures of modern womanhood. Through this tension, Crane invites viewers to reckon with their own dissociation and yearning for embodiment.

David De Lira’s photography brings a lens-based, perspective to the conversation around intimacy. His portraits of lovers, friends, and chosen family exude emotional depth and a sense of sacred vulnerability. Each photograph is not merely a record of a body but a tender archive of connection. By consciously employing light, gesture, and gaze, De Lira transforms his subjects into co-authors of the image, subverting the typical dynamic of artist and model. His work resists objectification through radical empathy.

Susanne Ausnit’s self-portraits offer a deeply personal window into aging, maternity, and emotional states. Through watercolor and subtle compositional nods to Renaissance imagery, her work evokes both the maternal tenderness of the Madonna and Child and the sorrow of the Pietà. In one striking piece, a self-portrait with her dog, the emotional register is layered—there is devotion, fragility, and a profound sense of temporality. These images do not just depict a body, but the act of becoming, retreating, and reclaiming it over time.

Aurora Andrews, meanwhile, centers the maternal experience in her work, painting motherhood from the inside out. Her use of invented color and embodied brushwork asserts a mother’s voice often absent from visual discourse. Her paintings counter the cultural flattening of motherhood into symbol or stereotype, offering instead deeply subjective, visceral perspectives. They affirm motherhood as a valid, complex, and often unseen dimension of identity.

Michelle Silver’s emotional landscapes balance abstraction and figuration, memory and motion. Her work draws from personal experience trauma, mental health, and desire, yet speaks to broader human experiences of navigating inner worlds. In the space between the conscious and subconscious, Silver’s figures often appear as echoes or spirits—perhaps not fully present, but unmistakably real. Her pieces remind us that the body carries more than physical form; it bears memory, pain, joy, and resilience.

Across the exhibition, viewers encounter bodies in transition, bodies in communion, bodies reclaimed. Whether in the fractured energy of a brushstroke, the tender line of a photograph, or the meditative stillness of a textile or sculpture, Some Bodies reclaims the figure from the gaze and returns it to a place of personhood. These are not bodies for consumption, they are bodies with agency, bodies in relationship, bodies that feel.

A full list of the artists exhibiting: Aurora Andrews, Suzanne Ausnit, Elizabeth de Bethune, Harris Billeci, Lauren Blankstein, Lynne Breitfeller, Samantha Brinkley, Louis Chavez, Sue Collier, Cena Pohl Crane, Leah DeVun, Jessica Farrell, Tabitha Gilmore-Barnes, Isa Goico, Zena C Gurbo, Monica Hamilton, Jody Isaacson, Scott Keidong, Erin Kuhn, David De Lira, Mary Katherine McFerran, Lesley A. Powell, Joel Clifford Rhymer, Laura Wasson Schneider, Michelle Silver, Kathleen Sweeney, Mika Taga, Kate Taverna, Ella Tunis, Jane Westrick, Caitlin Winner, Lindsey A. Wolkowicz, and Simeon Youngmann.

Some Bodies is a necessary exhibition in our current moment. It does not pretend to offer definitive answers but creates space for reflection and dialogue. In a world where bodily autonomy and identity are increasingly politicized, the act of representing, and witnessing the human form becomes revolutionary. The artists in this show remind us that a body is not just a thing to be looked at; it is a life to be seen, heard, and understood. In doing so, Some Bodies transforms the gallery into a space of empathy, intimacy, and radical visibility.