Take a lipstick #2

A performance concerned with the relation between feminine corporeality and language as a way of describing the world and establishing a hierarchy. Language is a form of power, whose structures and categorizations are so strongly inscribed in our way of perceiving the world that they became unnoticeable and 'transparent'. Access to language not only at the level of verbal communication but also the ability to read and write, seems to be something common and obvious, allowing us to express and define ourselves and the surrounding world. Thus, it opens the way to independence, unavailable for people in societies, where citizens are divided into those who can read and write and those who cannot, the illiterates. Very often this division goes together with gender. Women more often are deprived of the access to even a basic education. Whoever influences the language, determines the frame of the world's perception and distributes the power in the society. My performance was based on the participation of the viewers. They ceased to be passive recipients and are invited to participate in the action. They came to me one by one and wrote with a lipstick on my body, their associations with the word women. Then, I wrote on the glass that was dividing the performance space and the space for the public, the words associated with power. During the last part of the performance, I washed the inscriptions from my body.

The background for the performance was a slideshow of photographs made during the first version of this performance in 2012.

The performance was a part of the project: Neurophysiology of the artist in a performance run by the om Foundation

photo: Kazimierz Napiórkowski