Page 57 - "he 2020 Guggenheim issue of World of Art Contemporary Art Magazine

DANA MICHEL AND TRACY MAURICE

Dana Michel and Tracy Maurice, Lay them all down, 2020. Footage of the video and live performance Jams do Jams at
the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 23.10.–3.11.2018 Video, color, sound 33’31”. Installation view, 11th Berlin
Biennale, daadgalerie, 5.9.–1.11.2020 Courtesy Dana Michel und and Tracy Maurice. Photo: Silke Brie

Dana Michel defies expectations of dance through experimentation
and live imagery. During her performances we see remote controls,
chains, a dolly, miniature furniture, a microphone. Michel rubs
against surfaces, throws things, puts oversized clothes on and
takes them off, tries to make a song, wraps herself in rugs. These
seemingly unimportant tasks, repetitive and apparently mindless
movements, become a mode of reflecting “on the labor and
effortlessness of being a person.” Michel’s way of moving through
space and garments channels anger, sex, confusion, force, vexation,
and pleasure. She is having private thoughts in public, small
tournaments of conquer and defeat without clear resolution. This
instinctive playhouse disrupts all identity impositions. Dana Michel
tears apart assumptions by covering and uncovering stereotypes
with hilarious and difficult bodily interventions. Her collaborations
with Tracy Maurice intensify this quest. An interdisciplinary artist and
filmmaker, Tracy Maurice explores the correlation of analogue and
digital, live and recorded, often using film as a medium where two
or more concepts coexist. In Lay them all down (2020), as Michel
moves through physical frustration with humor and candor, Maurice
drives the camera over the floor, amplifying all sounds, using her
body as a tripod that advances and collapses. ... (excerpt)

DEL AINE LE BAS

Delaine Le Bas, St Sara Kali George, 2020. Mixed media. Installation view, 11th Berlin Biennale, daadgalerie, 5.9.–1.11.2020
Courtesy Delaine Le Bas; Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London. Photo: Silke Brie

The verb “gyp,” a derivation of “gypsy,” means to cheat or swindle.
Its derogatory implications reflect a reality in which nomadic
existence is seen as a threat to the social order and its institutions.
Nurtured by the experience and vocabulary of the Roma, Delaine Le
Bas (with her partner Damian Le Bas, who died in 2017) has engaged
in a lifelong practice of artistic resistance. Her work deconstructs
the norms, histories, and language that have historically been
instrumentalized to exclude and criminalize Roma communities in
the UK and beyond. Found objects, drawings, textiles, photographs,
sound, performances, and film footage are melded together in
Le Bas’ environments, which draw from her personal history, life
experience, and dreamspace. For the new work commissioned by
the 11th Berlin Biennial, Le Bas produces a new identity and a “living
sculpture” that borrows from the past to serve the future in the fight
against oppression: the figure of St Sara Kali George. This protector
of undetermined sexuality merges two patron saints of the Roma
people, Saint George and Sara Kali - figures that resonate across
disparate geographies extending from Afro-Brazilian traditions to
Hindu narratives. This new, myth-busting entity is empowered by
centuries of living knowledge that has survived the categorizing grid
of the capitalist everyday. On view are St Sara Kali George costumes.
Made from traditional and nontraditional ... (excerpt)

WORLD of ART 57