Can a body be institutionalized? The human mind certainly can. And what the mind absorbs the body enacts, as it is corralled by the social structures and physical architectures it inhabits. Paris-based Turkish artist Nil Yalter has created a body of work over the past forty years that addresses this idea in relationship to the politics of affect––specifically examining the experiences of women who exist on society’s margins, such as immigrants and prisoners. Her first solo exhibition in London presented three early works from the 1970s: La Roquette, Prison de Femmes, 1974; Harem, 1979; and

The nine works that were displayed in Anna Betbeze’s exhibition “Plush Vision” are both absurd and compelling. Created from flokati rugs—a type of woolen shag rug originally made in the north of Greece and now widely available—they appear, at first glance, to have been abused and distressed with fire as well as paint. Betbeze’s process involves searing the wool with pieces of smoldering wood and coal, soaking it in an acid dye, and weathering it outdoors, as well as shaving and perforating it. For her, the “soft white wool seemed [the] perfect ground to spill, stain, and defile.” This

In her exhibition “Arbeidsvitaminen (Labor Vitamins)” titled after the longest-running Dutch radio music show, Berlin- and London-based artist Marlie Mul unpacked a Panglossian narrative of technological progress. Reassuring viewers of our superiority to our Stone Age ancestors in a short written text, in the show she illustrated the law of progress with a selection of props. Sticking out from thirteen torn-open cardboard boxes were varnished papier-mâché replicas of wooden clubs; these appeared all the more brutal in contrast to the white packing peanuts that spilled from boxes toppled over on