IGA MROZIAK

Unforced

2025

A woman’s body reclines—quietly, with no tension. The gesture recalls a long history of artistic representations of the female figure, composed for beauty, for rest, for the gaze. Yet here, the body offers nothing. It performs no function.
Lying on her back—in grass, in water, on sand—she appears to exist outside the logic of utility. 

Elsewhere, another body. Tensed, airless, glistening with effort. Sculpted into obedience. A body too large for norms, too unnatural for any practical use, except to be seen. A bikini-clad bodybuilder, frozen in a competition pose—no longer for strength, but for spectacle.

Between them stands a woman before a mirror. She doesn’t speak of beauty. She speaks of usefulness. Calves that fit into off-the-rack boots. A back that survives 12-hour office shifts. Knees strong enough to crouch for hours picking blueberries. Her words describe a body not in terms of desire or identity, but of function.

This project draws on the writings of Silvia Federici and Byung-Chul Han, who describe how late capitalism disciplines the body—not with force, but through desire, self-management, and the illusion of freedom. The “entrepreneur of the self” exploits their own body, believing it to be empowerment. Productivity becomes identity.