FIVE Domestic Acts (2019)

The FIVE DOMESTIC ACTS, created by visual artist Martha Sakellariou, is a set of visual and performative on-site interventions that unfold in a residential space.

Text and images used with permission. Source: marthasakellariou.com/five-domestic-acts

ACT 1

ACT ONE [THE YELLOW WALLPAPER] is a durational piece loosely based on the short story of the same title written by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892. The story is about a woman writer confined in a house, whose passion for writing is stifled by her misguided and distant husband. During an audio reading of the book, a performer erases parts of the text from the pages that form a wallpaper; what remains of the text focuses on the dynamics of the husband-wife relationship and illustrates the attitudes towards mental and physical health of women in the 19th century. Parallel to the erasure process a dancer performs a short piece that explores alternative scenarios where the heroine breaks free from her mental and physical captivity.

Act 2

ACT TWO [THE WARDROBE ARCHIVES], features a collective exhibit that also becomes a space for a performance. Reminiscent of an archival collection, the display showcases personal and household items including books, garments, documents, flowers, toys, tools, laundry. The items chosen and contributed by over twenty women, represent individual perceptions and reflections on domesticity and womanhood. The audience is invited to shift through the contents of the wardrobe while a performer - who takes the role of the woman as the homemaker - explores the emotions and reflects upon the mundane acts associated with this space.

Act 3

In ACT THREE two dancers explore aspects of the kitchen space and the actual homemaking process by incorporating the kitchen area, tools and edible items into a dance improvisation piece. The performers take their cues from a 50’s instructional cooking soundtrack and respond to it in ways that illustrate a range of motions and emotions caused by the laborious acts of homemaking and provoked by the patronizing instructional voice. Their act concludes with a choreographed arrangement of a dinner table with a food display available for consumption and offered to the audience.

Act 4

ACT FOUR [A BALANCED LIFE] originates from an earlier series of photographs and drawings titled “the balancing acts”. The various iterations of these works examine the relationship of human body and architecture, specifically the female body in the domestic environment. The chest of drawers is an object that appears often in these pieces signaling the presence of secretive territories and standing as a symbol of a functional and disciplined domesticity. In the performative version of these works, a series of balancing acts are executed on a wooden piece of furniture while the performer wears a wood patterned apron that acts as a disguise, a barrier or a merger of body, object and space.

Act 5

ACT FIVE - involves two highly dynamic instances where the performer engages with two dominant objects in the domestic topography; the bed and the chair. Focused here, too, are the tensions of domestic life, a theme explored in all the sections of this work. The chair is explored as a symbol of both confinement and power and the bed as the area that signifies various states of body and mind awareness. The dancer actively embraces these dual relationships in a physical and emotional way while using the objects’s structural qualities as extensions and reflections of her body.

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