The inner world of an artist cannot always be gleaned from their performance or persona, not so with Koeksista; about a week ago, at the Bubblegum Club project space in Newtown, Koeksista blended art and life with aplomb, exposing her feelings and experience into an exhibition that intersects installation and intimacy, performance and personality with startling sincerity.
A walk around the room was a trip through Koeksista’s history; her travels, her vices, her hairstyles, herself, existing within her exhibition as person and performer. Her brilliant execution of transposing herself into these four walls made me revisit the question, how much of daily activity, of living, is performance?
We are coming into the age of emotionality and expression. Where the anachronistic theory on the superiority of rationality, much of it based in Eurocentric patriarchy is being overturned. The cold brutality through which people are socialized into suppressing their emotions and conditioned into castrating their creative impulses is also being questioned, for its effects numb human beings to their true selves and encourage emotionally fractured and fragile individuals. Koeksista’s exhibition, her projection of the personal into public reflects these cultural shifts. What man must accept is that our feelings guide us and are an instrument for connection and creation. And our progress as a species depends on our emotional capacity; on our ability to love and nurture ourselves and our communities. Down with capitalist and patriarchal agendas out to turn us into producing and consuming robots for the profit of corporations! The world is waking up, artists and activists and the internet are leading us to the future, one with a more human heart and face.
Easy Marina Abramovich comparisons can be made, perhaps they must be made but it must also be said that this performance interpolated so many influences and experiences and offered so much art and entertainment in a single viewing or listening, to create an unforgettable evening, it was extremely moving and quite brilliant. Kudos to Koeksista!
