Documentation of performance
80WSE Gallery, NYC
In 2017, I performed thirty minutes of surgical prepping on a woman in a gallery window on the corner of Broadway and 10th Street. She was dressed in my clothes, standing in front of a live video feed that was projected onto a sheet of canvas. The canvas was hung on the inside of one of the two street facing windows where the performance took place. Viewers passing by could only see the performance through these windows. During the thirty-minute prepping done to the woman’s projected figure on the canvas “screen,” I washed her figure, dried and shaved her body, and eventually cut and stitched her up. If the woman being prepped turned her head to look at her projected body, she could see what was happening if she chose to. I didn’t talk, look at, or touch the woman’s body itself.
Through the performance, I tried to create a dissociative experience between me prepping the woman’s projected body and the woman’s experience of herself through emotion or empathy rather than a physical experience of touch. The woman’s autonomy and control during the performance was limited to her decision whether to watch or not.