Kheperer [2014]
durational performance
Concept & performance: Federica DauriSculpture: Egon Schrama
kheperer is a long-durational installation performance developed in collaboration with sculptor Egon Schrama. A wrought-iron panel and a transparent plexiglass panel suspended 45 centimetres above it define a narrow space within which the body moves. The sculpture establishes a precise physical constraint: the distance between the two surfaces becomes the measure from which movement emerges.
The title Kheperer, meaning “scarab” in ancient Egyptian, is associated with the idea of becoming and transformation. The work originates from the image of an insect observed under a microscope: a minute organism whose movements and structures, almost imperceptible to the naked eye, become visible through sustained observation. Rather than being imitated, the insect becomes an internal image through which the body can move beyond familiar patterns of human movement and representation.
Within the confined space between iron and plexiglass, the body is forced to negotiate its relationship with the surrounding structure. Lying predominantly in a supine position, the performer redistributes weight through the back while the limbs search for directions within the limited vertical space. Movement develops through breath, pressure, resistance, and a sustained attention to the material boundaries of the sculpture. Slowness allows minute physical transformations to surface: a contraction of the skin, a shift of weight, the gradual passage from one bodily configuration into another.
Through duration and extreme reduction of movement, the human figure gradually becomes unfamiliar. At moments it evokes an insect or an organism whose anatomy can no longer be immediately identified, before shifting again into another form.
The transparent plexiglass exposes the body while simultaneously separating it from the viewer. The act of looking begins to resemble microscopic observation, drawing attention towards details that might otherwise remain unnoticed: breath, muscular tension, subtle displacement, the slow transformation of a posture. The longer the body is observed, the less stable its image becomes.