Almost a year ago, on a crisp autumn night in Berlin, the glazed-over windows of Kwadrant gallery greeted me on my way to see Elana Katz’s performance piece entitled V. People outside were standing on the window ledges on tiptoes, craning to get a glimpse inside. When I drew open the door, a flood of blue light poured into my eyes—phones on camera mode became beacons of arrival, small screens zooming in on a stark white cube anchored to a jet-black-colored floor. I drifted through the crowded room to a point where I could see the artist, on the floor with a white Philips iron in hand. Three perfectly pressed white pillows rested on the ground at her side; three stainless-steel mechanical timers ticked as steam escaped the iron’s surface.
Performance art can be seen as a holistic practice—ritual meets science to create a third form that lives outside of or parallel to normal constructions of space and time. As I began to follow Katz’s work, I started to wonder: Can these projects become a platform or catalyst for communities with erased histories of violence to alchemize their pasts in order to reclaim their present?
Katz opens something in herself to provoke discussion. When she’s performing, every cell of her body is activated. Each breath, bodily movement, all her sweat and tears help to cleanse the narrative. Katz pushes viewers to question their own emotional and physical boundaries and limitations. She pushes them to accept discomfort and find ways to lean into it instead of turning away. Her works invite you to unlearn assumptions about the ways complex manifestations of verbal and nonverbal abuse come to form. Katz plunges into the origins of these internalized conflicts and returns to mundane reality in the next breath.
