Hit Yourself: Self-Indulgence as Radical Vulnerability.

Performance at Mana Contemporary, 2019. This blindfolded tribulation, wherein the artist attacks a self portrait of herself masturbating in the form of a piñata, explores self-indulgence as radical vulnerability, using strength and violence to destroy and at the same time expose herself.

“--vulnerability & ferocity, rage & empowerment, self destruction & self actualization, the physicality that you breathed in to the expression we toss off so lightly, though it is in fact so heavy: “beating yourself up.” And of course, the ways in which themes of trauma and recovery and renewal and fury have a precise poetics & politics as a woman. One might even extrapolate that the whirl of destruction and creativity, wounded and unbowed, is a kind of portrait of your experience as an artist and as a woman. So, yes, to all of that. But I guess I just want to add that there was this other thing that was going on, in my experience of the piece, which was that...it felt very...loving. I try to be precise in my choice of words, and I keep thinking there must be some better word than “love,” but no, I think that’s the one. What I mean is that toward the end, when you were screaming--don’t get me wrong, I felt your rage and catharsis and release--but there was a kind of grace and joy, too, a generosity of spirit, like a tree that has weathered a storm and will now get on with the business of growing new branches, an expression of the self that felt to me connected to other selves, a loving thread. I am struggling to articulate this, perhaps, because it is a mystery. But it registered to me as a rattling, quaking truth. So: thank you. And all of that, I want to add, in a voice so distinctively your own, so “Z”--sweat and magic.” - excerpt from a piece by David Ramsey