Collaboration with Iskra Blagoeva

For this performance we are stepping outside- beyond the protected space of a gallery, but also beyond the poetic metaphor of shared intimacy. The new performative artwork is incorporating itself into the armature of public life and its complex interrelations. The female participants in the project are gathering together, assembling and dismantling 52 metal fragments scaled up and made of reinforced iron from the tattooed lines. The form of the sculpture is ever-changing.

MANIFESTO

S.I.S.

S-Conjuration. A Choice. An Oath. Resistance. Skinning.

 S.I.S. is an anarchist union – an open group of women and woman-like beings. 

S.I.S. women are young, old, yellow, blue, pink, green. Friends, enemies, mothers, grandmothers, daughters, mothers-in-law, witches, sisters. 

S.I.S. line has no beginning and no end. 

S.I.S. line is mischievous, cutting, fragile. 

S.I.S. line is alive. 

S.I.S. is a choice. 

S.I.S.S.S. is a vital artery. 

S.I.S.S.S. is a snake.

S.I.S.S.S. is a spell, a performance and a revolution.

 S.I.S.S.S. sssskinning S.I.S.S.S. women are from all corners of the world and speak different languages, but they all hiss. Sssssssssssss.

 

 

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Upon noticing that here lifeline was interrupted in the middle, Boryana Petkova decides to correct it and continue it with a tattoo, out of her own free will. Iskra Blagoeva suggests to continue the line through her body, as an act of trust, bonding and sharing. This marks the initiation of the project, born from this complementarity between the two artists. It took place on 31.12.2021 in Sofia, Bulgaria. The idea is to create a sisterhood, manifested by the lines running through the bodies of different women, each one selected and invited by the one before. Gathered together, they will thus create an endlessly transforming drawing that will remind and visualize the already existing powerful bond between women. The roles are also being reversed, from a professional and personal point of view: artist – curator, drawing – surface, mother – daughter, 
friend – colleague, author – performer, etc. This is a performative act that will evolve over time. This project was initiated through an interest in the knowledge of the body as practiced by women. Their connection to witchcraft and the sacred, albeit an alternative one, is still dismissed to this day, when the medical science is still biased towards the female body and the study of the menstrual cycle, female neurodivergent deviations and the menopause. Today, when women’s fundamental rights are once again under threat, they must take their fate into their own hands by defending, upholding and empowering each other.

Joana P.R. Neves