A misdiagnosed stress fracture that came about as the result of an intense training schedule and several grueling performances in 2016 left me with severe chronic pain in 2017. Temporarily unable to perform at the same intensity that I once did, I chose to take my practice in a new direction. The year found me making improvisational pieces while under the influence of painkillers, employing long stretches of stillness and silence, and revisiting the idea of making “action paintings.”

My action paintings involve swallowing paint and then spitting/regurgitating it onto canvases. I see this as a visual metaphor for the act of making performance itself; we take in experiences and then expel them from our bodies to make art. These paintings became my main focus this year, culminating in two related pieces.

“There Is A Light” explored my experience with chronic pain the deepest, as it was an hour-long piece that was performed while I still needed to use crutches to get around. It was done in a sweltering hot room in the middle of summer to a packed audience that slowly dwindled until there were only five people left. I began hidden under a cloak and mask and moved around the room quickly but with great difficulty. I threw the cloak off and revealed both my crutches and a kitchen knife that I then used to cut an onion and invited the audience to cry with me. I verbally challenged everyone to stay in the room while the heat intermingled with the onion smell. I then chugged large gallons of red and black paint and spat them onto the canvas. I laid on the canvas and told the audience to light candles and place them on my skin.

“There is a Light Jr.,” performed at El Museo De Los Sures, was less intentionally antagonistic, as I was now more mobile and in less pain. I spun in place for several minutes before I dizzily began making my painting. I then tore open a bag of soil, poured glue on my face, and stuck the soil to it. I lit candles around my canvas and then kneeled down and tried to balance lit candles on my outstretched palms as I sang a song by The Smiths.