And there was blood

I did this performance infront of fellow MA students in one of our informal critics, on Wednesday 9th February 2011. It is the first performance I have done, probably influenced by my new found interest in feminist performance art, and barely preparing it. Everything seemed to fall into place as I decided what I was going to do the night before... issues that I deal with in my practice and specially new directions I am very eager to explore flourished. Through the performance I gave power and sense to ideas that are difficult to express otherwise, or that have not yet found image form. It is a personal statement of the research into gender, body, surgery and religion I am doing.
Through the discussion after the performance, I found out more clearly and in words what I was addressing in a very intuitive way, in the feedback I got. In my view the different meanings perceived do not exclude each other but rather reinforce a symbolic link between them: cesarean section, abortion, childbrith, surgical operation.
The last part of the performance, when I paint my lips red, was described as a private gesture with sexual connotations and linked to menstruation through the colour and the counting of the days of the fertile cycle.
This performance was very much about the symbolic power of blood and draws parallels between surgery, eucharist and female bodily experience, focusing on the rituals of body opening-body opening as vagina, surgical practice and sacred wound. The mouth symbolises this idea of "body opening" with all its different yet symbolically connected meanings.

Thank you Lisa for recording
*What I take out of my mouth is an oval-shaped etching plate with an image of a baby as represented inside a womb, inspired by medieval woodcuts.