Art Exhibition
The Last Human Kissat Sainsbury Centre
Email Address scva@uea.ac.uk
Goldweight representing human couple, c.1700 – 1899, brass, Ghana, Africa. Donated by Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, 1973 © Sainsbury Centre. Photograph: Denisa Ilie
About The Last Human Kiss
Spanning painting, sculpture, photography and film, The Last Human Kiss explores how the kiss has shaped human ideas of love, intimacy, devotion, betrayal and belonging.
The Last Human Kiss explores how the kiss has shaped human ideas of love, intimacy, devotion, betrayal and belonging, and traces how artists have returned to the kiss as a way of thinking about human connection and condition. This exhibition features representations of the kiss between two people to its digital and beyond-human expressions in the 21st century.
Spanning painting, sculpture, photography and film, the exhibition features work by Anthony Van Dyck, Auguste Rodin, William Blake, Tracey Emin, Wolfgang Tillmans, Shilpa Gupta, Sophie Barber, Patty Chang and Dorothy Cross.
‘The First Kiss’ lingers in the fragile space where attraction becomes attachment and strangers become companions; ‘The Divine Kiss’ explores the Baroque fascination with love’s power to disrupt; in ‘The Social Kiss’ intimacy reflects political or collective dynamics; ‘The Romantic Kiss’ explores desire’s euphoric charge, while ‘The Trickster Kiss’ brings us to the present, where kissing takes on mediated, digital, and post-human forms, at once everywhere and strangely absent.
The Last Human Kiss forms part of the Sainsbury Centre's How Do We Find Love? exhibition season.
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