A long photo-performance session documenting the repairing of a broken decorative vase.
Restoring, recomposing, preparing – while forced at home.
Dedicating, nursing, attending – to beauty rituals and pleasance.
The praxis of portraiture and its value.
Inspired by the philosophy of Kintsugi – edges highlighted in red.
During the long Italian lockdown in spring 2020, the house becomes a laboratory for crafts, experimentation, and personal care. A broken vase – related to the performer’s personal history, with a peculiar kitsch aesthetic and allusive of the feminine body and stereotypical image – becomes the object of obsessive and meticulous care as a metaphorical attempt of recomposing features, restoring pleasance, and getting ready for the best next public image after the previous one got broken.
This project emerges from the reflection about intimate and homey rituals and the preparation for an external sight. The artist’s personal research about the concept of limit and the value of portraiture is engaging the sense of sight and its predominance. Yet, what is seen triggers imagination
Credits
This project was created in response to the PhD In-Practice Seminar ‘Resisting Borders: Navigating the Liminal’ by Traci Kelly, for De Montfort University’s Drama, Dance and Performance Studies Research Institute, June 2020.
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