A taming
JEMILA MACEWAN A taming


A taming
2018

Performance with leather hide, massage table, soil, and cotton fabric


Audience members were invited to engage with the artist in an experience of touch. They were asked to remove their shoes before stepping into the space, where the artist lay, on a massage table, under a bare cow skin, her face exposed.

Participants were invited to touch the skin and talk to with the artist as much as they wanted.

" My body warms the skin of the dead cow which is the touch organ of the animal body. Two bodies joined together - one living and one dead - are intermediaries for the touch experience. I developed this performance work to respond to the current social and political state of anxiety that surrounds our cultual relationship to touch. I want to be present within that anxiety, approaching it directly and empathetically, by performing a situation of touch as a bridge between the living and the dead." 

"For my own understanding of this work, I draw upon the mythological theme of the Selkie, which is a Celtic story from my own heritage about a woman who rejects love in order to be complete with herself – characterized by her removable skin, the only tie she has with her wildness and freedom."