Transfixion. 2019.
Performance. Duration: 2.5 hours.
At 10 am on Thursday, November 14th, 2019, I sat at the Blanchard bus stop at Mount Holyoke College, dressed in all white with white contacts blocking out my irises and pupils and surrounded by rectangular strips of cloth that had red eyes of varying pupil sizes painted over them. As people walked by and/or waited for the bus, I continuously applied makeup to my face. Witnesses intrigued by the fabric veil secured to the bus shelter wall next to my seat that read “SEE UNDERNEATH” lifted the veil to look into the broken mirror fragmenting their image. Whenever I could see the action reflected in the mirror I was using, I abruptly stopped what I was doing to look them in the eye, and used my body to aggressively wipe the makeup off onto my clothes. I cut away the parts of my clothing now stained with makeup, drew a closed eye on the fabric piece with a lipstick, and slowly handed it out to the person who looked at me originally. Every time this would happen, I would begin re-applying my makeup, otherwise disconnected from my surroundings. Whenever the bus was pulling up to the stop, I would remove all the makeup in a frenzy before it stopped, and look blankly ahead of me for the duration of 10 minutes that the bus would sit there. If people stopped to look at me and not interact with the SEE UNDERNEATH veil, I pointed at them directly and motioned them into participating so I could continue cutting off the makeup stained clothing that occurred when the bus arrived. The piece ended at 12:35 pm when I got on the bus and rode off with it.