Exploring movement in performance, creating images and actions as a form of activism.
“ I use somatic movement as research’s method; the body and its material, scores and losses for personal and collective discoveries. I use both autobiographical and collective knowledge to challenge the perception of the self under social constructions and cultural environments, and to redefine and deconstruct univocal notions of the female.”
Recent selected works:
Foetus
Movement and New technologies, Richmix London 2015, Leyden Gallery, 2018Foetus, is an un-seen and highly innovative concept of new media art where humanity and technologies are interlaced through the wonder of pregnancy.
The use of technological devises positioned on the performer’s body, as Electrocardiogram and Fetal ultrasound Doppler, generate real-time graphics and sounds and control playback properties and create a set of elements in continuous progression that influence and overlap one another creating an experimental audiovisual performance.
“ The impulses I have receiveid from my pregnant mind and body generated the need to move through the experience and create for others a different representation of pregnancy and its physical outspring.”
LAC
Performance to Camera, Mother House Studios 2017Exploring childhood and attachement, the repetitional effects that empty spaces in the body and brain have in life choices.
The resilience of a body that keeps standing despite the pain left within, the apparent ignorance and the many questions lacking of answers.
What’s care? What is lack of it? How does it shape your identity?
L Girl
Live Performance and Installation, Leyden Gallery, DAW Take Over 2018Somatic movement, observing sensations in the body, the nervous systems and its ability to reveal truths. I use heavy stones travelling through my chest down between my legs, moved by the waves of breath, I work on traumas stored in the body and manifesting in socially engaged practices, past and present connections.
“ Heavy, daily grows.
inside the fear.
defensive.
You can watch me, come close or leave the room.
Judge me, you are safe now.
I only know I want to understand.”
Mating
Performance to Camera, Dorset Woods 2019This work is part of my ongoing research on birth as part of women’s sexual life and its repression. I have developed it for the final work part of my Doula Certification programme. In my research, I explore the interconnectivity between women’s sexual pleasure and childbirth. Recreating the conditions for a profound, undisturbed and transcendental sexual experience, we could regain the understanding of the need of women in labour.
‘ Women should be able to talk loudly about each aspect of their lives. They should not feel inhibited during sex, pregnancy, while giving birth, and not after.
You cannot be inhibited when creating art so you should not feel inhibited when creating life
Under optimal conditions, and following the theory whereby ‘sexuality fuels the creative work...’ [Vagina, Naomi Wolf] and considering birth as the ultimate, amplified sexual experience, can we create a connection between birth and a transformational sense of creativity? And how that would feel and look like?
REpetto
Studio Practice at ]Performance Space[, 2019In this performance, I explore notions of body acceptance. Revisiting self, past inflictions to fit the idea of the perfect body, as a dancer, I use heavy scaffolding boards. I play with their weight on my feet to re-inflict the pain, physical and mental, I have gone through during my childhood in the attempt to fit pre imposed standards. I use flour to reshape that history and create new movements and narratives of the dancing body.
“ How do we move between the obstacles of a socially conscious body?
It’s a continuous dance with what you feel and what you do know is expected. An emotionally arid hearth cannot feed the body into a nourishing dance. Aesthetics of perfection are in conflict with your desire to be yourself. Pressure pushes you and your feet under heavy furniture, and your self-esteem, mental health under heavy layers of shame. ”
Show On
Live Action and Images, 2020Reframing what sensuality looks and means under the status and constrains of single motherhood and a global pandemic.
Can we shift the way we approach sexuality, the body and the misconception that ‘giving birth’ brings abstention?
In most of my work, my son is observer and participator of an unfolding process for discovery and reinvention.
Shedding
Performance to Camera, Dorset 2020 - London 2021 - Ongoing actionShaving my fur coat, I transition into a meditative state, re-journeying changes, body memories related with gender prescriptions and experiences of sexuality. Looking into growing more possibilities outside and within, movement drives transitional states, stretching shapes and generating learning in the uncomfortable. More places are awaiting.
“ I gave birth to my son and I have re-birthed myself. I have shaved, grown back my hair, went deep in the meaning of the soul. I am facing what I was taught to repress and deny. I am naked and I don’t use anymore make-up”
My mom’s torn tights
Performance to Camera and video work, 2020With this work, I explore some aesthetics of women in relation to my origins, class and gender roles, with an interest in the frictional relationship between sexuality and motherhood.
“I have experienced sacrifice by the daily watch of some torn tights my mother would wear daily, regardless of her appearance...”
© Dyana Gravina 2020 all rights reserved