2-channel video
Variable dimensions
2000

In Body Language, Richard Humann explores the relationship between language, physical identity, and the ways we understand gender through the body. The two-channel video installation presents two poems written by the artist: Soft Silk, associated with the female, and Hard Lines, associated with the male. Each poem is painted directly onto the corresponding model’s skin, transforming the body into both the subject of the work and the surface through which its language is communicated.

The camera circles each model, gradually revealing the poems as the words unfold across the body. Presented on side-by-side monitors, the male and female figures become parallel sites of disclosure. The text is revealed word by word, moving from top to bottom, as the viewer reads the body as though it were a page. Language, normally encountered as a separate system of symbols, becomes inseparable from the physical form that carries it. Reading becomes an act of looking, while looking becomes a process of interpretation.

The contrasting titles, Soft Silk and Hard Lines, evoke qualities traditionally associated with femininity and masculinity. Yet the work’s gradual, synchronized revelation complicates these familiar distinctions. As the poems emerge on adjacent screens, the bodies become less fixed representations of gender and more fluid expressions of identity. The unfolding text creates an androgynous moment in which the differences between male and female remain visible, but the act of revealing oneself becomes a shared experience.

The work also considers the body as a form of communication. We interpret physical appearance before we know the person, often attaching assumptions and expectations to gender, shape, and presentation. By placing language directly on the skin, Humann makes these assumptions visible while inviting the viewer to look beyond the immediate image. The poems offer another means of understanding the body, shifting attention from appearance alone toward the ideas and meanings it can carry.

Through the interplay of text, image, and movement, Body Language transforms the human body into a site of both expression and interpretation. The two figures reveal themselves gradually, their words emerging through a process that is at once intimate and performative. Humann suggests that identity is not communicated through appearance alone, but through the meanings we construct, the language we use, and the ways we come to understand one another.

Richard Humann_Body Language video art screen capture — Richard Humann • *Body Language* • 2-channel video • Variable dimensions • 2000

Richard Humann_Body Language_Debora Balardini — *Body Language* Production Still

Richard Humann, Debora Balardini

Poem for Female:

Soft silk
frames the painted
portrait red
pursed lips
push out muted messages
of motherly love
sisterly concern
spousal commitment
a whores disembodied
love song

Milky breasts white
with weaned abandon
liquid life
supple announcements
of sensual desire
average embodiment
of androgenous anatomy
pride
or poor excuses
of personal identity

A glorious trail
towards blonde black brown
tufts
of topiary treasures
decorate the gateway
archway
to unbridled pleasure
animalistic evolutionary acts
conceived
carried
and painfully propelled
life
comfort warmth
home

Poem for Male:

Hard lines
long features
sharp corners
shave away the primate within
the morning ritual
a clean smooth rough
polished appearance

Strong shoulders carry weight
of family
a
the
combined
success and failure
attack the frontward
defend the backward
relax the midsection

Right hemisphere forward
a retraction of emotion
an exaggeration of bravado
an extension of pride
measured in inches
miles yards feet
moving marching running
ahead in retreat
huddled in cowardly victory
triumphant in denial
celebrated in infamy

The alpha complexity
looms wide thin
shallow deep
fear the same
action not

Photo credits: Jonathan Fung / Richard Humann Studio

Body Language

Curriculum Vitae

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