Candylicious
performance: 18 minutes
The performance was created first for a gallery space in Queens (Local Project), then developed for a black box theater space in New Jersey (Nimbus Dance), and finally for a Brooklyn performance art space (The Exponential Festival.) I collected various beauty materials and objects used in society to define the “girly” female body: pink, skinny, airy, and hairless. A Sleeping Beauty cutout is a visual beacon for me during performance. I dressed in calamine lotion and took pepto bismol to numb the internal resistance to conforming to a “girly” archetype. Intense muscular articulation of the body trying to break through the calamine and reveal itself comes up against a flattened view of a smooth and unfettered presentation of self. In thinking of the loudness of the “girly” aesthetics in the backdrop I created, I wondered if beauty standards can come from within or are internalized behaviors from societal influence.
Performances at
Local Project (August 15, 2019)
Nimbus Dance (October 5, 2019)
(photos by Odelia Toder)
Para\\el Performance (January 11, 2020)
(photos by Walter Wlodarczyk)
