Bather
Performance
SFAI, San Francisco, CA
Year: 2017
Duration: 4 hours
I move between a meadow at the bottom of the building and a patio at the entrance of a vernissage at the Diego Rivera Gallery at SFAI.
At the meadow I continuously dig a hole my own size utilizing only my hands and rocks until exhaustion; I then move up and bathe at the patio in front of the vernissage. I move between both activities until it is completely dark (after sunset) and lay in the hole for as long as I needed.
This feminist piece alludes to the oppressive western-centric male gaze upon the female body and its depiction in Art History. Referencing a long tradition of painting ‘bathers’, I attempt to deconstruct the fetishization of female bodies as I dig my own grave in a structurally hidden and submersible territory. The landscape I occupy plays reference to a post-industrial violent relationship with women such as in rape, murder or mutilation discarded in obsucred urban landfills.
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At the meadow I continuously dig a hole my own size utilizing only my hands and rocks until exhaustion; I then move up and bathe at the patio in front of the vernissage. I move between both activities until it is completely dark (after sunset) and lay in the hole for as long as I needed.
This feminist piece alludes to the oppressive western-centric male gaze upon the female body and its depiction in Art History. Referencing a long tradition of painting ‘bathers’, I attempt to deconstruct the fetishization of female bodies as I dig my own grave in a structurally hidden and submersible territory. The landscape I occupy plays reference to a post-industrial violent relationship with women such as in rape, murder or mutilation discarded in obsucred urban landfills.
