Between the Lines: Performance in Intimate Exchange

The artist’s performance practice centers around a persona—an identity that merges fiction with non-fiction, humor with truth, and absurdity with sincerity. This persona is a lesbian mom and college professor, who is often presumed to be single due to her erratic, sometimes inappropriate behavior. She drinks, smokes, and offers questionable advice that, though misguided, feels strangely more honest than supportive. Her actions, awkward and relatable in their discomfort, challenge the boundaries between authenticity and performance.

However, this practice is not solely focused on the traditional "audience" of performance art. Instead, it revolves around intimate, private communication and dialogue—often a back-and-forth video exchange between two people, whether that be a lover, a friend, or an interlocutor. In this context, the idea of an audience is recontextualized: the performance is no longer just something to be observed from a distance, but a shared experience between two people, blurring the lines between public and private spaces. This shift raises a key question: can something between two people, like an artist and a lover, be considered performance, or does it need to be observed by a third party to legitimize its existence as art?

In these intimate interactions, the persona’s actions and advice are presented not as theatrical gestures but as raw, unfiltered communication. The audience, in this case, is the person on the other side of the screen, or one individual randomly pulled from an audience, but the very nature of the communication—its vulnerability and often chaotic humor—questions what it means for something to be "performed." The conversation becomes less about entertaining or educating an audience and more about the nature of intimacy, connection, and the public/private divide in art-making. The performance is not necessarily about spectacle, but rather about the private exchange and the tension between what is presented and what is perceived.

Beyond this, the work also challenges the idea of legitimacy in performance art. What makes the persona "real"? Is it the relationship between the artist and their audience, or is it the presentation itself that constructs the performance? The video exchanges between the persona and her lovers and friends reflect this paradox, as the persona oscillates between authenticity and artifice. The work moves between these layers, questioning how the platforms we use, from digital video to public presentation, shape our understanding of what makes something "real" or "art."

Ultimately, the persona’s interactions—both intimate and performative—raise questions about the boundaries between performance and life, audience and participant, reality and artifice. What happens when the line between these elements becomes fluid, and how does this challenge our conventional understanding of performance in the context of both public and private exchange?

Conceptual Overview