THIS IS NOT ME, THIS IS ALSO ME 2010
Museum of Modern Art. New York City 2010
Six performance-interventions during Marina Abramovich's:'The Artist Is Present' in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
I sat in front of Marina, six consecutive days dressed as six different female identities: an art critic, a tourist from the mid west, a hipster, a hasidic jew, a Jersey girl and the last one being a veiled muslim. I wore a full length black Burqa and Niqāb which covered my entire body and face, except for the eyes. I sat with her for 42 minutes, then continued upstairs where the retrospective of her work was being shown. I stood in front of a re-performer elevated high on a wall, her arms and legs extended in a crucifixion pose. We stared intensely into each others eyes, she began to cry. My body was completely covered, her's was completely nude.
This same re-performer, later talked about this experience in an interview, mentioning that it was the only moment during the three months of reperforming when she truly felt physically naked.
The performance was based on the experience of annulling the individual. I no longer represented myself but a collective identity. I became a symbol. A question. A contrasting figure. The "other".