Mary Coble, Binding Ritual, Daily Routine, 2004
Mary Coble
Binding Ritual, Daily Routine

Mary Coble (*1978 USA, Denmark) works with installations and performances where she often uses her own body as a metaphor of two contradictory states of mind and body fluctuating between vulnerability and resistance. In her work Coble criticizes social intolerance and the tight parameters of dichotomy (feminine/masculine, rich/poor, beautiful/ugly) that are clearly inadequate and insufficient to define a reality that is much broader and more complicated. “(...) I introduce viewers to individuals and subcultures, such as transgender people, drag kings, and the queer community who break societal norms of acceptable expressions. I want viewers to become aware of their responses, recognize the stereotypes they consciously and unconsciously reinforce, and question the biases their choices are based upon.” (Mary Coble) MM

artist's website: mccoble.com

The artist’s naked torso is silhouetted against a black backdrop accentuating her skin’s softness/fragility in a nearly picturesque manner in front of the camera. In the full-length performance Coble explores the physical limits of pain and resistance as she repeatedly sticks adhesive tape to her breasts and removes it again. The constant rhythm of her gestures starts to slow down with the visual pain that the repetition, the ritual routine, causes to her skin. In the absurdity of this routine, the artist makes the symbol of femininity appear and disappear by uncovering and covering her breasts. In this manner, Coble establishes a consciously defined dialectic, one in which she rejects the labels and conventions regularly attributed to all that is feminine and frees her body at the same time, whose femininity is being freely guided by her own principles.


Courtesy Conner Contemporary Art, Washington, D.C.

Document media
video

Issue date
2004

Tags
be-coming, femininity, repetition/seriality, stereotypes