Labor
Performance (2019)
Scored live work, approx duration 15 - 20. min
In Labor, the audience enters an empty room. Moments after, Lisa enter wheeling a cart, prepared with tools and objects. Placing the cart to the side of the room, Lisa strap on her working gloves and hand out M3 masks to the audience. From nothing, she starts constructing an environment. Lisa picks up a “caution” banner from the cart, and span it across the room forming a harsh divide. Returning to the cart she unloads its objects and distributes them in the space: a foldable chair, a bag of cement, a roll of orange barrier mesh, cable ties, a work lamp, a bouquet of lifeless flowers, a hammer and nails. Pouring a heap of cement onto the floor, Lisa attempt to create a fundament for the dead flowers as she plants and waters them, in the process forming a meaningless concrete structure for bygones.
Lisa starts rolling out the mesh, and gradually begin wrapping it around her head, obscuring her face. She fastens it with cable ties, like one would do one's hair with pins, however the sound of them tightening echoes viciously. Disguised from facial recognition, she sits down. Vulnerably Lisa exposes her body, pulling a banner out from her vagina reading "CAUTION". She packs up the chair and grabs the hammer. Sternly she pins her distorted head wrap to the wall. She struggles to rip herself free. Finally successful in freeing herself, Lisa leaves the room and the audience, their natural breath still inhibited by their masks. Reflection resonates within the energy of their experience in a room that now has transformed from an empty room into an art installation; a construction of gender and failed infrastructure.
Performed at Parsons School of Design- New School (New York)