Theodora Skipitares's Performing Objects
1989; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 33; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/1145930
ISSN1531-4715
Autores Tópico(s)Art, Politics, and Modernism
ResumoIn an evocative image from an early work, The Venus Cafe (1977), a masked Theodora Skipitares sits on a high stool dressed in 20 layers of men's white cotton shirts and pants, with dinner plates of different patterns hanging from her neck by multicolored ribbons. She rises and does a slow, clunky dance of the plates, prefiguring the lyrical dance of the women in Conestoga wagons in The Age of Invention (I985), and the dance of the noses in Defenders of the Code (I987). Thematically, personal and universal concerns merge in this image of woman repressed, restricted and bound by traditional household duties; formally, the image raises a number of aesthetic issues that will develop throughout the artist's work. In The Venus Cafe, Theodora Skipitares is both humanoid and manipulator, both puppet and puppeteer. Andrea Balis, Skipitares's longtime friend and collaborator, says of the artist's early work:
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