Artist’s Performance: Lucía Pizzani’s ‘Las Cáscaras’

07.06.2017

8.30pm – 10pm

Art Exchange

admission free

Internationally renowned visual artist Lucía Pizzani presents a live site-specific performance inspired by her video piece Las Cáscaras (2013), which is currently on display in (C)overt Corporeality. 

Pizzani’s performance has been choreographed with four female University of Essex students dressed in African wax print suits that reference natural patterns.

Each figure is ‘born’ individually from a tree; twitching to life, their movements are constrained by the cocoon. In the following scenes, the figures connect with each other through long swaths of fabric, interacting with the landscape – the trees, the lake, the surrounding architecture. The act of ridding themselves of the fabric cocoons punctuates a nocturnal end.

Designed to occur at dusk, the low light will diminish en route as the performers travel from their emergence point until the finale.

Pizzani’s performance highlights the female body’s connection to nature, thus questioning norms of gender and corporeality. The ‘hatching’ of the cocoons symbolizes the complex issues surrounding female liberation.

Free. All welcome.