Power Exchange Rate, at UNDERSTORY
Power Exchange Rate examines how intimacy is shaped, regulated, and contested within capitalist systems. Through a feminist and queer lens, this exhibition traces how personal experiences—relationships, gender, pleasure, and the body—are shaped by broader economic and political forces. It exposes intimacy as a site of exchange. These works show how systems of control dictate and commodify personal experience.
The exhibition brings together works that blur the boundaries between pleasure and power, autonomy and control, objecthood and agency. Lauren Poretsky’s whips made of paper currency transform financial capital into erotic instruments. Violet Maimbourg’s illuminated armoire, filled with hormone vials, prosthetics, and cast fragments, discloses the rituals of gender affirmation to public view. S. Brown’s vivid photo series uses birth control objects to point to how personal choices entangle with laws and cultural pressures. Additional contributions from regional artists explore how private decisions are shaped by capitalist structures.
A central idea runs through the exhibition: the language of capital infiltrates the language of love, care, and sex. Drawing from the work of Judith Butler, Paul B. Preciado, and Lauren Berlant, Power Exchange Rate suggests that intimacy itself has become a currency as it circulates through systems that seek to regulate and profit from it.
As the desire for control over our personal lives intensifies, the exhibition positions intimacy as both a site of resistance and a field of negotiation. It asks how we love, care, and desire within a world that is constantly trying to set the terms.
UNDERSTORY is dedicated to exhibiting interdisciplinary and conceptual work by regional and emerging artists, fostering experimental practice, critical dialogue, and community engagement.
Join us for the opening reception of Power Exchange Rate from 5-8pm on Wednesday, January 14 at UNDERSTORY, located on the RAMP (lower level) at 78th Street Studios.
UNDERSTORY
AT 78TH STREET STUDIOS
1305 West 80th Street, Suite 019
Cleveland, Ohio 44102
understory.art
Power Exchange Rate, January 14–February 26, 2026. A group exhibition exploring intimacy under capitalism. Opening reception, 5-8pm Wednesday, January 14
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