“Seamstress” is a performance that invites participants to cut white oxford cloth shirts and attach the fabric to the performer’s body with sewing pins, creating a collaborative garment while clothing the subject. The performer and the participants experience shared emotions—vulnerability and discomfort—when they relinquish control within the collaboration. This exchange prompts an inherent physical risk to the performer while also placing a responsibility on the participant. The performer acts as a mirror that confronts participants with the questions of what it means to be vulnerable, and how the performance act becomes a shared emotional experience. Will performer and audience create an unwritten relationship of trust and empathy through the exchange, or will the risk of harming the performer preempt that intimacy? By practicing vulnerability and opening up the possibility of pain, the situation leads to a heightened state of awareness between the performer and participant.

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