To Be A Woman Is To Perform

To Be A Woman Is To Perform

This performance video is inspired by Yoko Ono's cut piece. Although I added my own twist to it, this is supposed to represent what the experience of a woman is as well as capturing childlike wonder. Under a patriarchal view point, women are deemed less than men. Although raised by a single mother I believe women are the strongest alive and may I say stronger than men. I included memes from Tik-Tok in my video that are captioned as “ To be a woman is to perform”. I believe it is meta to my performance piece because I am quite literally performing.

This also raises my point on how yes in fact, being a woman is to perform. As little girls we are taught how to perform. We are taught how to behave around the world. What roles are and as we grow up we try to break free from them. I was taught I can’t express myself without getting called rebellious and a bad daughter. Rolling down the hill is supposed to represent this cycle of being stuck in this performance. Womanhood means curating our image in order to be perceived as beautiful or interesting to others. The continuous performance of femininity that inevitably becomes second nature. We are taught how to act to be more desirable and perfect. In my performance piece I am running around as a representation of freedom. freedom of the constant harsh criticism I put on myself, of how it felt before I was 9 and discovered that I have a body everyone perceives. Before that age, I was never thinking about myself in a bad light. I loved myself and my body.. I felt genuinely happy and free.

Although this is something I strive away from, there is this constant need to perform femininity. Subconsciously as well, it is something that leaves me feeling like an imposter when doing so but when I am around family I have to present myself a certain way. If not, this will impact the appearance of my mother and what kind of woman she is. When looking through social media all we see is women and compare ourselves. They also sell us stuff to be more feminine to exude more beauty. It is like femininity is based more and more on the things we buy. We even see femininity influencers who tell us how to be more feminine basing it on how we all look but still empowering you internally . It doesn’t make sense. We are sold things and yet are being empowered to be “ourselves”. In the end we don’t have to look feminine to be feminine and it is something that has always bothered me. Yet sometimes I am hard on myself for not feeling “beautiful” because I do not dress hyper feminine.




Quote 1: "mediated representation influenced generations of future artists. Cut Piece was one of the best examples where the visceral presence of the author confronted the tension between exhibitionism and voyeurism, masochism and sadism, between victim and assailant”.
Quote 2: “Perspective makes the single eye the centre of the visible world. Everything converges on to the eye as to the vanishing point of infinity. The visible world is arranged for the spectator as the universe was once thought to be arranged for God”.
Quote 3: "The eye of the other combines with our own eye to make it fully credible that we are part of the visible world"