As first year students in the fine arts graduate program at the University of Pennsylvania, we were required to put on an exhibit in the Charles Addams Gallery within the first two or three weeks of arriving.  At this point, and for the last five years, I had been  composing large abstract paintings. But something happened when I arrived at Penn. More specifically, something happened when I arrived at the Morgan building, which is where my studio was located. I won't get into it now but as the year progressed I uncovered some interesting historical facts about that building that may have had a kind of otherworldly influence on the grad students, including myself.

Because of my sudden lack of direction when I arrived (I did not want to continue making abstract paintings), I did not feel comfortable about showing the abstract work that I had been presently working on. And although we could show work from undergrad, I did not feel comfortable doing that either. 

I had done some performance art in undergrad, but those performances were generally inauthentic and experimental--avant garde without the substance (at least that is how I viewed them)--I realized at some point in undergrad that was not Abromovich nor Acconcci, and did I want to be. The idea of performing at the Penn group exhibit did not cross my mind until a few days before we were supposed to put up the show. 

At that point I was really mesmerized by a song called Artichoke by Cibo Matto. I was also thinking a great deal about marriage and my fears around it.  My partner and I were already together (although that year he stayed behind in Vermont while I was in Philadelphia––a very rough year for me. I used to drive up to Vermont as frequently as once a month to see him). By this point in our relationship, despite it being relatively fresh, I already knew I was going to marry him (in fact, I knew I would marry him at the onset of our first date). But I was scared about marrying him. I had already been married once and had failed at it (more on that later in the Love Letters segment). And because his family was seemingly perfect and financially and academically successful, I worried about their perceptions of my patchy and inconsistent past. 

This performance is about the anxiety around other people's perception of me and my desire to change my image from something tattered and tainted to something pure and perfect. Yet the whole performance is in itself flawed and fraught with imperfection. The wedding dress, for instance, is ripped and secondhand (it was actually my wedding dress from my first marriage that I never ended up wearing). The Hugo boss man ad is the idealized man torn from a magazine. Symbolically, the ad addressed my inevitability to meet his expectations and remain a viewer/outsider to his idealized existence. He is encircled with shards of glass, making my relationship to him volatile, broken and incapable of closeness.

On the walls, I mounted several dozen broken bottlenecks that I had fished out of the river with a former lover, Sabina, back in Vermont (she will also be included in the Love Letters segment). Essentially, there is no safe or comforting place within the space. 

Following the performance, I thought I had done an effective job on the timing and choreography. However, I got the sense from most viewers in the gallery, especially the women in my graduate program, that they were unimpressed with the performance or thought I was simply being an exhibitionist who was trying to come across as an artist. Their reactions and sudden distance made me self-conscious to the point where I began to doubt my abilities as a performance artist. Thus did not perform again and have not since. 

Despite the judgment, the criticisms or dislikes, it was an honest performance. As I look at the pictures now, I can't help but feel content and regretful. Content because I pulled it off in an authentic manner. Although it was pop-music video influenced and even lowbrow, I view these traits as valid descriptors that helped to fuel my personal commentary of the culture that I grew up in. I feel regretful because I chose to listen to the negative voices and did not continue to improve my skills as performance artist.

The positive outcome of the performance is that three of my professors encouraged me to explore the female sexuality that was clearly within me and within the books that I had already been making. After the first semester of my first year there, I stopped making abstract paintings and was all the more relieved for it.

 

Artichoke by Cibo Matto (poor audio quality--not as ghostly as it should sound).

 

 

Magic Man by Heart, Dreamboat Annie 1976. For the last couple of days, I have been intermittently singing and dancing to this song.