Ida Sophia

Liveness: A Manifesto for 21st Century Performance Artists

11

January 2023

11

Jan

2023

3

Feb 2023

Gallery 2

Liveness: A Manifesto for 21st Century Performance Artists

Ida Sophia

11

January 2023

11

January

2023

3

February 2023

Gallery 2

Concerned with investigating how live performances are re-experienced by distant audiences, this exhibition considers multiple strategies of re-encountering Ida’s 2021 durational performance ‘Regret’. Guided by a manifesto on performance ‘liveness’ the exhibition is an artist-led archival experiment, testing how body-to-body transmission may reoccur. ‘Regret’ was an act of redemption. For 28 days, 6 hours a day, Ida observed a monumental installation of flowers decompose. This life-to-death process mirrored the disease upon her Father’s body that she didn’t have the courage to face. Ida regretted being absent from in his last month. ‘Regret’ invited the audience to participate and release their own regrets. After writing, the participant attached their regret to her. In this act, Ida physically took on and carried the symbolic weight of Regrets. On the 28th day, Ida ceremonially cast off the collective weight she had carried.

Concerned with investigating how live performances are re-experienced by distant audiences, this exhibition considers multiple strategies of re-encountering Ida’s 2021 durational performance ‘Regret’. Guided by a manifesto on performance ‘liveness’ the exhibition is an artist-led archival experiment, testing how body-to-body transmission may reoccur. ‘Regret’ was an act of redemption. For 28 days, 6 hours a day, Ida observed a monumental installation of flowers decompose. This life-to-death process mirrored the disease upon her Father’s body that she didn’t have the courage to face. Ida regretted being absent from in his last month. ‘Regret’ invited the audience to participate and release their own regrets. After writing, the participant attached their regret to her. In this act, Ida physically took on and carried the symbolic weight of Regrets. On the 28th day, Ida ceremonially cast off the collective weight she had carried.

Ida Sophia

Ida Sophia (b. 1989) is a Tarndanya/Adelaide-based performance artist with a hybrid media, sculpture and installation practice that draws on the body to render performative works in various materials. Beginning with personal narratives, Ida’s work is characterised by conceptual examinations of widely shared, uncomfortable human experiences such as hope, regret, familial tension and grief. Ultimately, the works construct a capacity to accept, understand and process pain within our faculty of reason, will and belief.