- Venue
- Bar Lane Studios
- Location
‘I cannot say that she has undressed, since there is no excitement of revelation, no unveiling. The skin she lives in in this work is, of course, a female skin; and like all skins it is not totally exempt from the ideologies of the cultural gaze. But her laying bare of this skin, its total giving over of itself, enables its use as a site where we might see more clearly, aside from our habitual ways of seeing, the relation between a phenomenological body and its becoming object, its cultural, mnemonic and ideological makeover.’ Heathfield, A (2004) in La Ribot, eds La Ribot, Marc Perennes & Luc Deryke, p.26.
The ground up
Cotton wool pads, round like soft matte pearls were placed carefully on the soles, cushioning her feet from the cold tiles and making pillow-like shoes. The order of ‘things’ is turned upside down, a back to front perspective, a reversal of planes, we start at the ground and work our way up, Sofia transforming herself with each careful placing. Careful, in the case of Sofia, should not be confused with a performance of overly pronounced gestures, of forced gestures that die as they describe and press too hard to be looked at. Careful Sofia pressed the cotton pads with ease, a necessary task, no need for a needy showing off, just doing the thing like it were the only thing that one would or could do.
A dressing
Given that the rest of her body was naked we comply to drift in and out of each careful pearly placing until all that was bare was not. There was a veiling and we could see this clearly, the distinct lack of an unveiling, again, disrupting the usual order of things and sparing us of a dangerous spectacle. Paradoxically, as she covers she uncovers, a veiling reveals an unveiling; we see more of Sofia as we are exposed to less. The ‘dressing’, a dual term used to refer to the object of cotton wool and to the physical act itself exposes careful places that are so underexposed, re-exposing parts of her self and therefore parts of ourselves that seem to have been buried underneath the robes of inhibition, those that society and culture dress us in.
At ease
There are gazes un-used and un-practiced to seeing anyone other than ourselves or those we allow closest. We are not used to this here and it shows but she shows us it is ok; her permission is endearing; a moving stillness offers complicity via eye contact and an easy smile. A ritual, a preparatory moment to collect her self gathers more use for an audience adjusting to this new visual rhythm that Sofia carried with her as she entered the space. The room lifts in this moment, passes into performance although we are not sure where or how this phasing happens, a difficult transition navigated seamlessly thanks to Sofia’s ease.
Denying a body
Performance is difficult, it is not easy to stand there and I find myself wanting alongside my watching and waiting. I am jealous and I am sad that it is not me standing there, the fear that stops me proves itself uncomfortable and to be anything but immaterial. I fail myself and in failure I remember my body and I remember that it hurts to be forever denying it. I feel nostalgia for an imagined body, a brave body that I have never experienced nor probably ever will.
About the body that they cling to
Sofia uses her body as a material, a rich surface, porous like the cotton wool, fibrous and full of potential. Such simplicity holds us, and simplicity; the apparatus that produces our attention pays off in its mutual attentiveness. We register the image, the accessible surface, a body being entirely covered in cotton wool pads. Yet, it is what is underlined in the in-between, in the shadow and shading of lines, curves, arcs and folds that really show us of what and how this body has been made and unmade.
The impossible image
Our bodies hold onto a realisation of the impossible image. Where pads don’t stick they fall and this tells us something important about the body that they cling to. Their sticking and un-sticking, their holding and un-holding illustrate the particularities of this form and of the places where this surface is too formless to hold it together, a placeless unravelling where things come undone. In this formlessness we have a failing that produces a chaos but one where it is ok to fall, even if the realisation of the image and the completion of this futile task, both already bound to fail are forfeit. We hold our breath in the space between each pad that stays and the first one to fall. A sigh of relief as the cotton comes quietly crashing down, followed by our hopes that they might all stay. We soon realise that in this game falling is the best part, if not the only point of playing at all.
A modest nude
She echoes an image of Aphrodite of Cnidus (4th century BC). Praxiteles’s of Athens statue, famous for its being the first full body female nude. Aphrodite of Cnidus, stands with her right hand hovering over her pelvis and covers but without touching herself. This is modesty doubled; the modesty of covering is performed modestly. Her knees face inwards, covert, like her eyes that avert us by gazing to the left. The left hand holds a robe made redundant yet it is this redundancy that tells us that Aphrodite has a choice. The purpose of the robes purposelessnes is to assure us that she can infact choose to cover, that she is not exposed against her will, that she has decided to show us and is in control of how much or how little to reveal. And so to Sofia for in her specificity, those careful cotton selections show us that she too has made and is making a considered choice. It feels revelatory, she has found a way to show us her body; vagina, pelvis, stomach, breasts, neck; all of those heavy places in a way that denies of any easy erotics or any unecessary spectacle.
Pressing matter
There is a reciprocal relationship, special attention given to these commonplace things; a humble cotton pad, a humble body, making a familair relationship strange. A transformation takes place each time her fingertips press at another place on her body. Paradoxically, in the act of covering herself up Sofia gives us a more intimate, more detailed illustration, not just a dead end aesthetic but the lived possibility of an experiencing of the phenomenological body. The work works somatically, it touches, it is touching to watch it, and in this case a watching becomes a feeling, an empathetic exchange.
The smallest adjustment
It is necessary to say that such simplicity leaves so much room for us to see. To see that such a task takes time, and it did take some time, 45 minutes or so. To see this performance reminds me that performance has no place for and no need for spectacle and to do only what is necessary is our biggest challenge. I continually find myself asking the question, ‘what is the smallest adjustment that can bring about the biggest transformation?’ a question of which this performance seems a fitting answer.
Artist: Sofia Greff: www.sofiagreff.com
Writer: Victoria Gray: www.victoriagray.co.uk / www.ouiperformance.org.uk
