For my performance art piece, I wanted to explore female rage. In my piece, SHATTERED, I begin in a dainty white dress with a large metal rod in my hands giving a clear juxtaposition between the vibes of the subject and the action. The video involves me breaking bottles by lining them on the ground, and smashing the pole into the bottles until they are completely shattered. I break around 10 bottles, all in a very composed and methodical process. Once they are all smashed, I pick up a shard of glass, come over to the camera and roughly cut my hair with the glass, letting the hair fall to the floor in front of me. I kept the video mostly raw and like that you can not only hear the vivid sounds of glass breaking but also chatter in the background. An artist who inspired me was Yoko Ono and her work 'cut piece’. From that I was inspired to incorporate a removal of a part of myself in the piece which I decided would be my hair. I’ve cut my hair impulsively like that before and I use my hair to express myself. Hair also grows with you, I often change my hair to make a new version of myself, one that some people have never seen, talked to, heard or touched.
My piece was inspired by a recent therapy session I had. We were discussing the fact that I tend to distance myself from traumas and negative emotions, specifically anger. He actually suggested I try something through art so the assignment came at a perfect time. I truly believe that my experiences and opinions on anger as an emotion are directly connected to the fact that I was raised as and am perceived as a woman (im non-binary). Anger first showed its ugly face to me at a quite young age through my father. I am reminded of a quote from the short story ‘Cut’ by Cathrine Lacey; “if you’re raised with an angry man in your house, there will always be an angry man in your house. you will find him even when he is not there. and if one day you find that there is no angry man in your house—well, you will go find one and invite him in!”. I unfortunately relate heavily to this as my ensuing relationships would only add to my aversion to anger. I find that women in general often have to mute their anger. Any small side remark or expression of frustration is immediately seen as ‘overreacting’. It is seen as a male emotion and, by most of society, an endearing one. Women however must be pacifist, and it transcends to another level when discussing women of color who are over portrayed as angry and violent even when they are not. I find emotion to be an emotion I am detached to and often say that “I don't get angry”. One artist I felt inspired by was Valie Export. Seeing that she changed her name to protest the patriarchy so it no longer linked her to her father and ex- husband. This immediately hooked me as changing my last name so it is no longer connected to my father and his family has always been on my mind. One quote by her that sticks with me states: "Although some of my performances look very painful, they are not. When I think about how I live, how we all must live in our society, it is painful.". Her work is greatly inspired by revolting against the patriarchy.
This performance piece was very therapeutic to me, but it is also interesting to see what occurred without my planning. I tend to overplan everything but recently I've been attempting to challenge that. So for this piece I really just let whatever happened, happen. This quote by Marina Abramović, reminded me of that: “I hate the studio. It’s a trap to me. Ideas come from life.”. Life never goes as planned but sometimes that is a good thing, as was the case in this art piece. Funny story, the day I decided to do my performance, my nextdoor neighbors-whose yard is probably only a couple feet away from ours- were having some fancy party. I laughed to my mother about how they’d be getting a free art show. She was there helping me film and after I was finished told me that the party-goers had stopped chatting immediately as the first bottle broke and slowly filtered inside very promptly. I’m not quite sure if you can hear it in the video but at some point they start singing ‘happy birthday’ which just adds an unpredictable and very human aspect to the piece. In relation to the prompt though it is very interesting. In a way I did have a live audience, and I got to see their reactions to my art, which seemed to be a bit more on the negative side. They were uncomfortable with my expression of anger. I wonder if they would have the same reaction to a man doing so.
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