Ana Mendieta, Burial Pyramid
Tag: performance art
Ana Mendieta, “Mirage 1,” 1974. Super-8 colour, silent film transferred to DVD. Running time: 3 minutes, 15 seconds. Copyright Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection. Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York and Alison Jacques Gallery, London.
Carlos Martiel, Trophy, 2016. Photographed by Annamaria La Mastra.
“I’m lying down in a fetal position with a hunting arrow crossing my waist.”
Franko B., I Miss You, Performance , 1999 – 2005
Gina Pane, Food/TV News/Fire, 24.11.71., performance
In an hour and a half, I swallowed and rejected 600 grams of minced meat, until I managed to disrupt the relationship between: organ of the digestive system (servile instrument of biological “determinism”) and the instructural impulse of nutrition …
Jana Sterbak
Carolee Schneeman, Meat Joy, performance, November, 1964
Mike Parr – CLOSE THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS
A man sits slumped in a chair; he wears a black suit, white shirt and no tie. His right trouser leg is ripped across the thigh revealing the word ‘alien’ branded into his skin. This is a six-hour endurance piece. During this time his lips, eyes and ears are sewn together, rough surgical sutures cross his face, blood and iodine solution run from the wounds onto his white shirt. The man can’t speak; his vision is impaired. Before him a huge mirror reflects the viewers, mostly standing back against the clean white walls, secondary witnesses to the trauma enacted on the artist’s body.
The text along one wall incites us to ‘CLOSE THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS’. In a separate room excerpts from Not the Hilton: Immigration Detention Centres: Inspection Report, published in 2000, are projected onto the walls. Parr’s action is an empathetic gesture, in recognition of the trauma experienced by ‘illegal’ immigrants who were, at the time, sewing their lips shut as a protest against their prolonged incarceration.
Mike Parr consistently uses his body as a site for radical actions that explore the psychopathology of people and society. Staged almost a decade ago, this powerful work still resonates politically and speaks to the nation’s shame.
—Anne Marsh
Little Bristling Soul 