one-to-one performance: 6 hours
Commission for "Secret Archipelago"; Palais de Tokyo; Paris, France. 2015
Participants were invited – one at a time – to relate a personal trauma that still troubled them. In exchange, I offered a menu of cherished ’solaces’ that I received as a child from my mother (which, incidentally, she always withdrew too soon):
- back scratching with fingernails on bare skin,
- ear cleaning,
- hair brushing,
- storytelling from memory, lying down side by side
I administered the solace of their choice for as long as they wished. Notwithstanding the awkwardness/misfit of one person’s comfort to another person’s malady, participants unreservedly engaged with the piece. One man requested for all the solaces and stayed an hour.
Costume by the nonpareil Annika-N.
photos by: Vestal McIntyre