FRAMED
May 13, 2022 Opening performance to the itinerancy of the collective exhibition
L’altre ubic. Migracions del cos fragmentat
Panoràmic Festival 2020. ‘Extimacy.’ Curator: Mercè Alsina
Centre Cultural el Casino. Manresa, Spain
Photo credits: Belen Castillo, Santi Zaragoza and Panoràmic Festival
“Living ‘femininity’ through the straitjacket-corset, from the skin itself, embodying tensions weaved between the string and the flesh, from the action of devastating some rungs towards a climbing unrealizable ideal, from the effort, the difficulty… the sweat and the frustration too.
To tight the string, to modify the borders of our flesh, to stick to a shape, to reduce the volume of matter, to get rid of that excess of flesh, to fragment ourselves, to polish ourselves, to occupy less space, to place ourselves within the pattern, to analyze ourselves with disgust, to eliminate the excess of flesh, to modify us, at any price…
The race to achieve the ideal corporeality, an eternal and unattainable effort, often lived with pain and self-hatred for not reaching this goal.
Body modification can be a liberating way; however, it can also be a masked sentence.
The feeling offered by the corset is a feeling that we experience intimately and individually, in the same way as this reading about our own body, about that gaze that reminds us of what is left over us or what we would like to see differently, about how strongly we would squeeze the corset strings, about what loss of breath we would like to cover to reach that corporality in which we would illusorily feel more comfortable.
I have always liked the feeling of tightness that the corset offers. Once inside it, you can squeeze yourself until you condition your breathing, containing yourself between the rods that keep the garment rigid, and the fabric that constitutes it. The corset is really the illustration of this idea of reducing matter, not permanently, but managing to modify the flesh while you wear it.
