Performance Art on the DVAA Balcony

Katie Coughlin | Watch the Curve

There will be two performances on Saturday, August 6^th, and Saturday, September 10^th, at 5 pm on the DVAA’s balcony and sidewalk, with a viewing area across the street.

Coughlin investigates the notions of home, vessel, body, and clothing through the manipulation of space and material. Although clay is most often the place where Coughlin begins her work, she uses other mediums, specifically cloth and wood, to expand her sculptures. These material-collaborative apparatuses allow her to incorporate the human body, placing her work between object, sculpture, and performance.

“As a teenager, there were constantly clothes to take off the line. We had, at one point, three clotheslines reaching out from the windows to the telephone pole tucked away in the left corner of our backyard. The reaching of arms out the window as our legs anchored us inside was a brutal test of our ability to balance and stretch. Our body became a part of this apparatus —as it often does when we complete physical tasks; our joints propel us forward while shoulders and hips and heads bear weight and get worked. When our bodies become mechanisms, where does the boundary lie? Is the edge of our body – the tip of our finger – or is it the ends of the bristles of the broom as we sweep the floor?”