Reeling was a performance regarding the orchestrative routine of femininity. The ten minute duration uses needles, wool, thread, and the body as materials through which the repetitive and constricting notions of internalized misogyny are addressed. By wrapping myself in wool, a fiber I am allergic to, while staring at myself, I take the soft object around me and restrict my body. As the wool winds tighter, I become indistinguishable from the reflected object, before eventually manifesting my own swaddle of constriction by pulling thread out of my stomach. Pulling shimmering thread out of my body and wrapping myself with it, I become what has been reflected of me; I constrain myself to a soft, contained, perfect woman.
Performance photos by Olimpia Dior and Stephen Clarke at Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, NYC.