Casey Jenkins
Endurance performance and installation sMother (2016). Sound design by Manuel Zabel.
Curated by Leisa Shelton | Fragment 31.
Casey Jenkins. Exhibition view of the performance installation sMother (2016) at the III Venice International Performance Art Week. Image © Alexander Harbaugh
Casey Jenkins, sMother. Endurance performance of 6 days and installation at the III Venice International Performance Art Week. Image © Lorenza Cini
Casey Jenkins is an Australian durational and community engagement performance and installation artist. Their work explores notions of intimacy and identity and the interplay between modes of power. They often deliberately toy with and attempt to redefine structures of power and influence through street art, experimental performance and by inviting audience collaboration.
At the VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK 2016, Jenkins present sMother, an endurance performance exploring fertility, pregnancy and the restrictive nature of gendered expectations. Viewers will layer a dynamic, unsettling soundscape (Sound design: Manuel Zabel) with snippets of pregnancy advice as Jenkins, who has had two miscarriages in the past year, knits rope with yarn drawn from their vagina. Over six days they will slowly unfurl the popular trope of the serenity of pregnancy, binding and distorting their body as the knitted rope and the fertility advice encircle and confine them.
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