Performalist self-portraiture

“I call myself a “performalist”. after Hannah Wilke and her ‘Performalist Self Portraits’. She was such a genius.” (Letter SMW to Aimar Arriola on 1 January 2021)

No matter which side of the camera, an image of one’s body is one’s own image. Regardless the photographer, that image is a self-portrait. Here is the crux of the performalist self-portrait: to claim both the subject and the object positions in image-making.

The performalist self-portrait, then, is not narcissism per se – a claim made against both Wilke’s and Sands’ practices and a claim which both found ways to reclaim. Maybe it’s radical narcissism. In any case, the performalist self-portrait is surely radical. It’s a radical demand for a both/and position in the world. Where the either/or’s would try to delimit us and categorize us, the both/and’s ask us to think dialectically. For Sands and, I think, for Wilke the both/and’s ask us to feel dialectically. Both/and. That’s the title of artist Lorraine O’Grady’s 2021 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, which Sands loved from afar, immersing himself in O’Grady’s writings and interviews over the course of that spring. Sands’ practice is intuitively and insistently citational, hence the prominence of Wilke’s invented typology in Sands’ world; hence the appearance here of Lorraine O’Grady; hence the ever-present links back to the Gift Science Archive guiding lights -- Wilke, Carolee Schneemann and Adrian Piper – at the bottom of each page of this website. Feminist praxis is intuitively and insistently citational because feminist praxis is built upon the shared belief that sharing and supporting (re: reproductive labor in all of its seen and unseen manifestations) are the basis of life, of a livable life, of making life livable, of understanding what livability looks like and feels like. It takes a village, as the saying goes. – MH. More No matter which side of the camera, an image of one’s body is one’s own image. Regardless the photographer, that image is a self-portrait. Here is the crux of the performalist self-portrait: to claim both the subject and the object positions in image-making.

The performalist self-portrait, then, is not narcissism per se – a claim made against both Wilke’s and Sands’ practices and a claim which both found ways to reclaim. Maybe it’s radical narcissism. In any case, the performalist self-portrait is surely radical. It’s a radical demand for a both/and position in the world. Where the either/or’s would try to delimit us and categorize us, the both/and’s ask us to think dialectically. For Sands and, I think, for Wilke the both/and’s ask us to feel dialectically. Both/and. That’s the title of artist Lorraine O’Grady’s 2021 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, which Sands loved from afar, immersing himself in O’Grady’s writings and interviews over the course of that spring. Sands’ practice is intuitively and insistently citational, hence the prominence of Wilke’s invented typology in Sands’ world; hence the appearance here of Lorraine O’Grady; hence the ever-present links back to the Gift Science Archive guiding lights -- Wilke, Carolee Schneemann and Adrian Piper – at the bottom of each page of this website. Feminist praxis is intuitively and insistently citational because feminist praxis is built upon the shared belief that sharing and supporting (re: reproductive labor in all of its seen and unseen manifestations) are the basis of life, of a livable life, of making life livable, of understanding what livability looks like and feels like. It takes a village, as the saying goes. – MH.

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