Untitled Flesh
I went to Untitled Flesh at the Randolph Street Gallery on “women’s night.” The show’s content wasn’t any different than on the other two nights of performance, according to a cast member, but she said that the audience energy does change. And from my own experiences in women-only spaces, I think I know what she means: mixed audiences are more openly sexual in their responses, while all-women audiences generally offer a broader spectrum of emotions.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The Los Angeles-based Sacred Naked Nature Girls perform in autobiographical and archetypal scenarios that include rape, masturbation, sadomasochism, children’s games, slave narratives, and ritualistic enactments. The performers–Danielle Brazell, Laura Meyers, Akila Oliver, and Denise Uyehara–are naked in a matter-of-fact way, however: their nudity seems to simply ground them more deeply in these often sexually charged stories, creating the illusion that we’re seeing them without performative pretense. Exploiting this illusion and their own bland, friendly stage personas, they push some buttons hard, forcing the audience to confront the ways we see naked women, from objectification to identification, from desire to disgust.
But despite the sloppiness of the performance, there’s a welcoming charm to the group, as if they were inviting us to a feast. In fact, the evening’s last image is of a strawberry communion. The women daub themselves with mud to represent scars and, taking a page from Alice Walker, proclaim the streaks to be “warrior marks” and declare themselves sacred for their survival, their suffering, and the beauty of their wounds. Then they offer healing strawberries to the audience members closest to hand. “I am sacred, you are sacred,” they repeat. It was tempting to believe this community would hold together, would lead to a stronger commitment to healing support among women: a field of berries where we could stay forever, peaceful.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Linda Kliewer.
