Dismantled acts

The video works that are presented at American artist Madeline Stillwell’s first solo exhibition in Hungary chiefly concern themselves with the human body. These filmed documentations of the artist’s performances address the formal ways in which the body functions, the indirect rules of this functioning, and the processes of eliminating these rules.

In the performances, which are realized in urban or industrial surroundings, the environment and its characteristic materials are also emphasized. Waste material found in the street, in abandoned places, or in construction sites, can be seen to have the same significance here as the artist’s own body—therefore it is the living body itself that becomes the subject which initiates such processes.

These works balance on a line between control and chaos, order and disorder, and simultaneously encourage the viewer to reconsider everyday emotional dis/orientations.