(e)merging bodies
Exhibition by:
Angela Woodhouse and Caroline Broadhead
Detroit Stockholm
Award-winning UK interdisciplinary artists Angela Woodhouse and Caroline
Broadhead present three collaborative works at Detroit, Stockholm, 17-27 June 2026.
Seen together for the first time, the video works, Thermal Duets (2016) and Who Cares
(2023), alongside the photographic series Who Cares Conversations (2026), emerge
from an extended interdisciplinary research process combining movement,
choreography and thermal imaging technology to explore themes of care, touch and
embodiment.
Working across dance, visual art and moving image, the artists use thermal imaging
to make visible the traces, residues and exchanges that pass between bodies in
motion. Heat becomes both material and metaphor: revealing intimacy, proximity,
vulnerability and separation through shifting fields of colour and light.
Who Cares is an interdisciplinary video work, situated between dance and visual arts.
It explores and applies the use of movement and thermal imaging in creating an
innovative video work which reflects on touch as a place of care, contamination,
intimacy and trust.
The project was prompted by interviews with ICU nursing staff in which individuals
reflected on their experiences of touch during and since the pandemic. It was made
apparent the need among front line staff for a moment of pause to capture personal
thoughts on the notion of one body in relation to another, of how touch, so critical in
the care context, had become so guarded.
These accounts prompted practical explorations and research in thermal video with
dancers, focusing on the expanded boundary of the self, made visible through thermal
representation. They created potent imagery to communicate the importance of
human connection in a dynamic way.
Who Cares innovates through the manipulation of thermal imaging combined with
movement/dance, registering the consequences of close contact and merging of
bodies, exploring the capture of breath and the heat transference evident in the
exchange of clothes or the thermal residue of touch. It reveals the potential for
painterly abstraction through the video capture of heat trace and with it, the opportunity
to explore a poetic interpretation of the tactile, connecting the worlds of technology,
biology and art.
Artist Biographies
Caroline Broadhead’s interdisciplinary practice explores objects that come into contact
with and interact with the body. Her work is exhibited internationally and represented
in many international collections, including V&A, Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto,
Museum of Art and Design, New York and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Her
retrospective exhibition (2017) was shown in the Netherlands and the UK. Finalist in
the Loewe Craft Prize 2025. She is Professor Emerita at Central Saint Martins,
London.
Dance maker Angela Woodhouse’s work is essentially interdisciplinary and
collaborative and has been shown widely over the last 30 years, most recently
(Un)touched (2016-2020) and (de)figured (2017) in collaboration with artist Nathaniel
Rackowe, exhibited in Belgrade, Oslo and Dubai respectively. Her latest work with
Nathaniel, Desire Lines (2024-5), was commissioned by South Bank Centre, London
as part of Winter Lights Festival. She studied with choreographers Alwin Nikolais and
Murray Louis (NYC) and worked with Reinhild Hoffmann (Berlin) and Sara Pearson
(USA).
Angela Woodhouse and Caroline Broadhead have collaborated on many works since
1997, most recently Who Cares 2022-26, which was premiered in the historically
important Wells Cathedral, Somerset, then to Edinburgh and Cologne, and last shown
at the London International Screen Dance Festival 2025 at Trinity Laban. Other works
include site and installation projects that find synergies between materials, space, movement and audience. Venues include Sadler’s Wells, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Lightbox, Woking, in partnership with Tate Artist Rooms and Royal Opera House, London. Historic buildings for which site works were commissioned include Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire, Witley Court, Worcestershire, and Upnor Castle, Rochester.
The exhibition is organized with the support of the Confederation of
Swedish Art Associations and the Culture Council.
Who Cares is funded by Arts Council England and Middlesex University.
Who Cares Conversations is funded by Liverpool University Hospitals Foundation
Trust.
18th of June - 28th June 2026
Vernissage: 17th June 18:00-20:00
Opening hours:
14:30-19:00
Address:
Detroit Stockholm
Roslagsgatan 21
11355 Stockholm
Contact:
Detroit Stockholm
mail@detroitstockholm.info
