“Scar Tissue” was a one woman performance art piece, part of the 25 hours of performance festival at the DCAC in Washington D.C. on July 19, 2014. I was addressing issues of memory and loss, through the metaphor of a wound, physical and/or emotional, which may heal but leaves a scar, a trace, a residue. It may be invisible but there is a scarring that remains present in the tissue and in the memory.

In “Scar Tissue” I sat in a chair facing the audience, my shoes and socks removed, and a large paper bag in my lap. Suddenly, I picked up the bag and turned it upside down. With a loud clatter, rough black stones and rolls of surgical tape spilled out onto the floor.

I picked up a stone and searched for the memory on my body. I taped the stones to my body, marking old wounds, invisible aches, losses and painful memories. Large white X’s of white tape held the irregular excrescences in place, disfiguring the body and making visible a history of past and present scars. I pulled socks and shoes over my transformed feet and adjusted glasses on my reformed face.

Standing up, painfully, I pulled clear latex gloves out of a pocket and carefully put them on. Slowly kneeling down on the floor I started gathering up the stones and rolls of tape with my gloved hands and threw them back into the bag. I was cleaning up. But my body still held the remnants of the remembering, the honoring and the mourning.