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STYLIST IMOGENE BARRON; NIKKI PROVIDENCE FOR DAVINES HAIR CARE
H
Q&A
HUFFINGTON
07.15.12
EATHER CASSILS is a performance artist and
body builder who
uses her body to
investigate issues
related to gender,
mass consumption and the industrial production of images. Her
conceptual pieces, which have been
performed in museums and galleries around the world, also highlight transgender or “genderqueer”
themes. For “Cuts: A Traditional
Sculpture,” she spent 23 weeks documenting herself building her body
to its maximum capacity by following a strict weightlifting regime,
consuming the caloric intake of a
190-pound male athlete and taking
mild steroids. —Noah Michelson
Huffington: People often think performance art is inaccessible, a joke or not
“real art.” Why is it so easily dismissed?
HC: Sometimes art is positioned as
something that’s just for the rich
or the elite, but it’s also often the
first thing to go when cuts are made
in public education, so that’s a big
reason. Performance art can be so
abstract. People often don’t see it as
a justified medium like painting, but
similar arguments were made about
photography not that long ago.
How did the use of your body become
central to your work? I was actually
trained as a painter, but I became
frustrated with the fact that not
that many people could see my
work. I think a lot of concepts that
exist outside of us — art-related
concepts — when you bring them
to the body there’s a kind of ownership and it creates that kind of immediacy. Everybody has a body so,
maybe you can’t paint that painting
but you do have a body.
Cassils
took four
photos of her
body each
day as she
transformed
it over 23
weeks.