PROCRUSTEAN
BED
Those who do not fit the norm do not exist.
Procrustean Bed examines how contemporary social and administrative systems compel individuals to adapt to predefined norms.
The exhibition focuses on migration, bureaucracy and integration—contexts in which personal history, language and identity are forced to adjust in order to remain legitimate and visible.
Through different artistic practices, the participating artists explore imposed roles, repetitive social scripts and external expectations. The Ukrainian experience becomes a lens through which universal mechanisms of normalisation are revealed.
SYSTEMS OF
NORMALISATION
The exhibition explores systems that transform bodies, biographies and experiences into material for correction. Migration policy, bureaucratic procedures, educational and medical institutions, and economic models of productivity forcibly adapt reality to a predetermined form.
The Procrustean bed is not only a metaphor for violence. It is a method: a standard applied to a person before the person is seen.
ANNA AVETOVA
MERCURY ART CENTER
RUKH ART HUB
FRIDMAN GALLERY
169 BOWERY, NEW YORK