Zhané Warren at Outlet
by Robyn Sassen
It was a clear warm day in early autumn. Outlet's small exhibition space was painted white and contained only a small table alongside a painted green wooden chair with an enamel basin beneath it. The table held a number of small paper packages tied up with cotton; the enamel basin contained old-fashioned individually wrapped shaving blades. This set the scene for Zhané Warren's performance work entitled eatmyheartout.
Before the artist presented herself, a tangible sense of violation and horror was cast by the setting. Perhaps it was the presence of the blades in the enamel basin, the whiteness of the room, the chipped green paint on the wooden chair and the basic quality of the enamel basin. The setting felt appropriate for a home-done surgical procedure, it bore vague premonitions of illicit medical acts, blood spilt secretly and horrible agony borne in silence.
Warren, barefoot, dressed in full-length white underwear, demurely entered the space. She sat on the chair and cut the thread binding the packages with a blade. Each package contained three or four tightly folded strips of paper. Each of these bore a simple line of text, in blue ink, beginning with the words, 'I fear ... '. Opening one package after another, and unfolding one strip of paper after another, she read the short line of text that each strip contained before swallowing it.
While the severed threads of cotton became subtle detritus on the cement floor, cold to the touch even on this warm day, Warren recounted an edgy narrative, specific but universal. It sporadically explored the intimate fears of anyone growing up in a world infested with violence and the presence of AIDS, interspersed with personal fears about having witnessed inflicted pain.
Struggling at times against the urge to gag or vomit, Warren swallowed these fears, written as they were in toxic ink on non-toxic, soluble Belgian paper. By revealing them and then ingesting them, she straddled the margins between public and private testimony, using her body, her history and their respective secrets as devices to contain, digest, expunge and dilute the fears.
A powerful piece of performed narrative, eatmyheartout was beautiful in the simplicity of its execution and devastatingly subtle in its connotations. The work was time-intensive and gruelling to watch, contradictorily forcing spectators, this reviewer included, to shift focus from Warren and to listen to her fears in introspective thought: What do I fear? How would I express my personal senses of inadequacy or insecurity?
A performance along the lines of 1960s and 1970s issues-driven performance in the west, Warren's piece is a valid and elegant contribution to the genre, bringing a tone of veiled violence implicitly South African in its detail, but movingly universal in its gesture and impact.
Performance: April 9
Outlet
Projector Room, Building 10, Arts Faculty, Tshwane University of Technology, 24 Du Toit Street, Pretoria
Tel: 082 772 4272
Email: outlet@mweb.co.za or zhanewarren@hotmail.com
Hours: By appointment
