Concept:
Between Us is an installation performance in three parts. The work unravels and examines critically our perception of what is acceptable, what is private, and the meaning we impose on what we see, informed by how we are shaped by the society we live in and the conventions we live by. The work doesn’t settle exclusively on one theme but stages socially engaged, layered narratives that draw universal emotions associated with vulnerability, disruption, perception, and beauty. The space is feminine and exposes extremely private, intimate practices to the public, creating images of our collective consciousness perceives as highly sexual.
Unnerving viewers in the process, the work exposes the roots of taboos and questions how our public experience affects us personally. The constant, private, repetitive, almost ritualistic actions of dressing and posing in front of a mirror, undressing, washing, highlight the carefully constructed and shifting identities demanded by the multiple roles occupied by women everywhere, intimate acts of transformation usually completed in the privacy of one’s own home. Their voyeuristic exposure via the performance simultaneously enhances the women’s vulnerability and their ambiguous power.
The male characters attempt at shifting our perception: by sweeping, washing, and interrupting the female performers they engender the destruction of conventional norms and our reading of the work. They try on female underwear; they attempt to break the taboos imposed on our society by taking on female identities, thereby constructing an uncomfortable viewing experience that asks questions about our existence and provokes thought.
