Still

Live durational performance

Nailed to the wall by my hair (pulled back in a long plait), the piece consists of a series of arrested poses, each held for about 10 minutes, for a duration of up to 2 hours. The work tests both the endurance of the artist’s body and the extent to which a moment of performance can be stretched.

My intention in this performance is to place assumptions about the female body under scrutiny and pose awkward questions: can we understand the female body in terms of strength & endurance, in terms of dynamism and even aggression? Does the ironic adoption of feminine poses (i.e. passive & available) trouble widely held ideas about how a woman should appear in public? Deliberate display of the female body is often dismissed as narcissistic – can my avowed narcissism be used creatively?

Duration approximately 2 hours