Dayana Stetco
The space of the exhibit is an obstacle course. The 50 foot ceilings, the white walls and the carefully delineated light patterns are nothing but traps. Shapes are not to be trusted. Planes collapse, perspective folds in on itself, lines curve with unexpected determination. There is little difference between the space of the exhibit and the space of the mind. Brought to life, if only for a second, silhouettes make an attempt at narrative, then fade in the background.
The women are always there. They have been, from the very beginning. Mother and daughter, lover and listener, stranger and saint. Their roles are arbitrary. What truly matters is the change. They seem to know each other, although they seldom speak. They come and go as they please, they show up unannounced, they overstay their welcome. There is hesitation in their movements, but no restraint. The space of the studio agrees with them. Their skin becomes more radiant, their lips part, the veins in the side of their necks pulsate.
Although they know I have no interest in the female form, they persevere. At times the daughter comes alone. She tempts me. She strikes lascivious poses or fakes interest in an unfinished piece. I tell her to undress so I can pour hot wax on her arms and extend them beyond recognition. I tell her to kneel down and touch the floor with her forehead. I tell her to pray. She doesn’t cry, doesn’t go insane. She suffers. Her arms show the signs of abuse, beautiful in their tortured form, red and purple under the burnt skin. I like peeling long layers of skin, I like exposing what was once hidden. The daughter reveals the secrets of her body one by one. One day there will be nothing to tell. That morning she will find the studio doors locked and the windows nailed shut. It is a risk she is willing to take. She is the anti‑Sheherezade. She struggles to prolong her death.
There is nothing tragic in her progressive disappearance. She’s starved herself for so long, trying to fit inside the fractured silhouettes piled on top of each other in the moldy corners of the studio; plunging deep inside the well filled with liquid glass; squeezing her thin waist inside the smallest corset - her body split in two halves held together by sheer stubbornness - that the thought of her gradual retreat into non‑space is less than shocking. The glass cast mimics the shape of her skeletal body and often, during the lunch break, she plays with it in the sandbox I keep for her in the middle of the room. It is a transparent rectangular box filled with sand, inside which she buries a glass femur or a fragile glass hand or - in moments of colossal frenzy - even a glass skull. Small pieces of flesh fall off of her arms and land sizzling on the ground, but, other than that there are no serious consequences to the glass game. At the end of the day, diminished and bleeding, she picks up her things and leaves through the back door.
Everything is possible in the space of the studio. There is a new word for every act of violence. Sensuality is in the air, in the swift waves of the Vaseline jar, in the treacherous softness of the wax, in the compliance of the fabric. I have always been surrounded by fabric: my mother was a seamstress who understood waste. All these years, I’ve waited patiently for the opportunity to examine the slow process through which yards of flat fabric develop into form through the use of pattern. A torso sprouting forty yards of cloth draped around the room is beautiful to me. The hybrid is beautiful. I’ve always wanted to cross bodies with objects, divide textures, push the limits of the fleshy outline, ask biology to cooperate.
I use the mother’s body sparingly. I test its possibilities, I ask it to expand, I make it devour other bodies. Used as a tailor’s dummy, the mother’s body proves extremely useful. I saw off her arms and split her chest open with a pair of silver shears Then, with the help of an assortment of shiny fastens, hooks and eyelids I reattach the pieces one by one. I work in sections: I lace up the right and left sides of the back, I sew the arms together. And although I never assemble her body the same way, the reattachment itself feels like a cure. Her insides need mending as well. The mother is a juggernaut. She levels everything in a desperate attempt at democracy. I laugh and she ignores me, pretending that the humiliations to which I subject her daily do not bother her. “This is the abject body,” I tell her, and smile, and quote my sources. I cut her open, I watch her wipe the blood off her thighs, I find inside her other beings. At times, it is the girl, at times, a tumor. “Same thing,” she says, “you’ve got to take out both, there is no difference.” I hold the cancer cells, loud and hungry, in one hand, the daughter in the other. I place a sign of equivalence between the tumor and the child, malignant and benign growths, both of them...until, one day, one of them speaks. She’s still bloody, still unsure on her feet. “Leave my child alone,” the mother says.
I use the mother’s body to write my favorite quotes: “Death is a simple phenomenon in nature only people make it complicated;” or “Let us put some order in our pleasures,” or “I leave this manuscript, I do not know for whom. I no longer know what it is about.”
At times the women pretend not to know each other.
They have tea in the sandbox, one the desert.
They make small talk:
“Do you come here often?”
“No, not really. No, wait...No, not really. What a coincidence that we should meet...”
“Strange, isn’t it, to have tea in the desert. (Whisper) Strange, isn’t it, to have tea in the desert...”
“The weather is so lovely...So lovely is the weather...”
“And the wind, so wonderful...And the wind, so full of melancholy...”
“Yes. What did you–“
“Anything?”
“What? No–“
“No problem.”
“My pleasure.”
And then, against the silence.
“Did you say something?”
“Not I. Not I...”
Lately the sand has been gathering some energy. The storm fills the cups with sand and the women die. Again.
At times they spend countless hours holding each other. Their wounds keep each other company. It is a touching picture, if you’re into that sort of thing. The mother’s hair drowns her features. The daughter’s body is now barely visible. Today she’s shed the last layer of skin. It won’t be long now.
This is the hour of the fairytale.
“Once upon a time there was a beautiful girl whose six brothers were turned into swans by an evil queen. ‘Can I not free you from the spell?’ the girl asked, and the brothers said, ‘Oh, no, the conditions are too hard. You must not speak or laugh for six years, and must make, in that time, six shirts for us out of star‑flowers. If a single word comes out of your mouth, all your labor is in vain.' And so the girl went into the forest, collected star‑flowers, and began to sew.”
The mother grows silent.
“And? What happens next?”
“Not much. The girl is accused of a crime whose punishment is death. But she cannot speak, she cannot defend herself. She keeps sewing and finishes the shirts...There’s only one sleeve wanting to the last. She throws the shirts over the swans and when they touch them the swan‑skins fall off, and her brothers stand before her, well and beautiful...only one of them has a sawn’s wing instead of an arm...And they live happily ever after.”
“Do they, really?”
“Happily. Ever after.”
“I want to be a swan. I don’t like being a girl.”
And then the hour of the fairy tale comes to an end.
The space of the studio is closing in on us. Reality is changing sides and I’m running out of time.
What I’m after is an insufficiency of form. What I get is the complacency of content.
Not good enough, ladies. Not good enough.
Besides, I’ve always been more interested in men.
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Last updated: March 4, 2005.