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This performance and collaboration with Katinka Kleijn explores the complex dynamics of female relationships, gendered adornment, and societal expectations of the female body, particularly in the context of female musicianship. Using the cello as a symbolic and functional extension of the female form, it investigates themes of power, control, strength, and limitation imposed by gendered constructs.
Through a series of actions, the performance examines how adornments—such as a tight dress, long fingernails, and stiletto shoes—serve as both extensions of the female body and instruments of its inhibition. Equipped with a contact microphone and a small amplifier strapped to Rin’s body, Rin uses these adornments alongside their physical form to generate sound and feedback while wrestling with the cello. Katinka deconstructs the cello through fragmentation, dismantling its physical and musical form, and recontextualizes its purpose.
The performance culminates in an inversion of roles: Katinka plays Rin’s body as though it were a cello, straddling her and bowing strings stretched across her back. This mirroring of the female body and the cello amplifies their shared symbolism, unraveling societal expectations and reasserting the female body as both subject and object—extensions and limitations intertwined—until both the cello and its metaphorical body reach a breaking point.
Photos Ricardo Adame
Elastic Arts
2023
