By: Daiyu Tang
There are art shows that ask you to walk through a gallery. BODY / BELOW asks you to descend into one.
Opening soon beneath the Hathian Performing Arts Centre (‘HPAC’), Art by Underground will transform an abandoned subway station into an exhibition on the body in all its uneasy forms: beautiful, wounded, sculptural, clinical, intimate, ruined and remembered. Hathian Citizens will not simply view work on walls. They will move through a buried station of dead escalators, tiled corridors, abandoned platforms, damp concrete, flickering light and old transit architecture repurposed into a gallery that we hope will make them feel that art was not installed but rather unearthed.
The exhibition is built around four connected ideas: Flesh. Form. Anatomy. Decay. Each takes over a different part of the underground route, using the station itself as part of the work. Visitors begin by descending from the Performing Arts Centre into the dark, then pass through spaces that touch on these themes.
This is not intended as cheap shock, nor gore for gore’s sake. Hathian already has enough of both, usually before breakfast and often dealt out by those with no appreciation of art.
BODY / BELOW is about looking carefully at what the city usually covers, sells, damages, worships or throws away. The body as image. The body as evidence. The body as temple. The body as ruin.
FORM begins at the descent.
The dead escalators become the first artwork. Here, the body is not yet flesh or wound. It is outline. Posture. Movement. Performance. The shape a person makes before the world decides what to do with them.
In this section, the visitor’s own body becomes part of the exhibition. Every guest descends through the work, framed by architecture and light, briefly turned into silhouette. Form asks how we arrange ourselves to be seen: how we pose, brace, seduce, threaten, dance, fold inward or stand our ground.
The body as outline, posture, movement and performance.
Turn from the main route and the exhibition enters the tiled corridors of the backrooms.
Here, ANATOMY is colder and more clinical. White tile, green trim, warning signs, service doors, damp floors and fluorescent light turn the abandoned subway into something between infrastructure and operating theatre.
This section asks what lies beneath the performance of the body. Bone, muscle, organ, vessel, nerve. The hidden architecture that carries us until it fails us. Here the body becomes diagram, specimen, machine, relic and miracle. Not to strip away humanity, but to confront the strange truth that every living self depends on systems we almost never see until something breaks.
The hidden architecture: bone, nerve, vessel, organ and system.
Inside an abandoned carriage, FLESH becomes close.
The train is intimate by design. A carriage forces bodies near one another: seated, standing, passing, reflected in glass, caught in breath on windows and the soft discomfort of proximity. This is where the exhibition turns warmer, more human and more vulnerable.
Flesh is the living surface. Skin touched, marked, desired, wounded and displayed. It is tattoo, scar, bruise, softness, sweat, memory and refusal. In Hathian, flesh is rarely neutral. It is advertisement, armour, confession, temptation and evidence. Every scar has a witness. Every tattoo makes a claim. Every body that steps into the light brings with it a history of what has been survived.
The living surface: skin touched, marked, desired, wounded and displayed.
The platform belongs to DECAY.
This is where the station’s own ruin speaks loudest: wet tile, rust, old benches, dead train, failing light, peeling paint and the feeling that time has been left alone down here long enough to make art from neglect like Hathian after the Hurricane. The platform gives the final section scale. It is less intimate than the carriage, less clinical than the corridors, and more absolute.
The body changes. It bruises, bleeds, heals, scars, softens, stiffens, rots, is preserved, remembered, mourned or made beautiful again by art. Decay is not the opposite of life. It is proof that life happened, that matter was warm once, that time touched it and left an answer.
Matter was warm once. Time touched it and left an answer.
Reflection
The exhibition does not end underground. After the platform, guests will return upward through an exit route into a dedicated reflection space within the Performing Arts Centre. After descent, surface. After ruin, air. The final room gives visitors a place to pause, write, speak, look back, or simply remember that the body they have been studying is also the one that carried them below and brought them back.
BODY / BELOW treats the venue itself as part of the work. It is not only on the walls. It is in the act of going under.
Event Details – ‘Body / Below’
Presented by: Art by Underground
In Association With: Hathian Performing Arts Centre (‘HPAC’) ((Also on the opening night in association with Hoppers… uh oh))
Opening Date: Friday 26th June
Opening Time: 1pm SLT
Location: Art by Underground, beneath the Hathian Performing Arts Centre
Dress Code: Your Body. Your rules. Nudity is acceptable if you dare. Lockers will be provided.
The gallery ((without some of the opening night… fun…)) is scheduled to remain open through June and July 2026. If you miss the opening night, entrance is free and guided tours are available.
Flesh. Form. Anatomy. Decay.
Descend carefully. The body remembers what the city forgets.
((AI Art will be limited and generally will only be event posters and e.g. subway signs. Art on display will be mesh, including some custom works… mmhh… all spaces are mesh locations as well 🙂 ))
