Performance Work
Jodi Sharp
Artist Statement 2015
"Herein lies the clue to the understanding of the secret power of the arts. They are in fact rituals, religious exercises, engaging the core of the human psyche, responding to and nurturing its deepest most secret needs and appetites. When the artist engages in his craft he dons priestly, vatic, shamanistic robes. "
-Wiebe, Myth, Religion and Ritual (The Subversive Artist), Pg 19
According to Henry Weibe in his book Myth, Religion and Ritual (The Subversive Artist), the artistic practice is synonymous with a religious one. Weibe states that the creation and consumption of art is "for the soul's sake," and that art holds power because it is ubiquitous with ritual, which is one of the conditions of our humanity. (Pg 26)
The themes in my work often coalesce around the creation of a new type of religious space, which I feel is indicative of an upcoming generation. Growing up in a non-inclusive and often oppressive traditional religious environment, I have come to see a new wave of individuals arise who are focused on the universal truths of spirituality, rather than practicing established religion. My practice is therefore interested in experimenting with taking established ritual and creating new spiritual spaces, and how that will effect the world around me. Practicing as somewhat of a religious poacher, I take ideas and concepts from various worldwide religious spaces and make something that is unique to a new generation.
Focusing on ideas of relationships, community, and environmental responsibility, I seek to create performative acts and ritual objects that help elicit change. In our culture there is a need to re-create an ethics of responsibility towards others, to abolish ideas of a binary and the Other in order to reduce conflict, and to reclaim a space in our society where there is a greater awareness of how we interact with and impact our environment. Using performance, object making, and community involvement, my practice focuses on the creation of stories and myth which parallel our current societal space, yet create new ways in which society can relate to others and the environment. Through small actions, and a dialogue around societal change, I seek to change the structure of the system through new ritualistic actions.
"Each person knows that somehow he shapes what will be, that what he is doing is not a charade which merely affirms what already will be, but an efficacious activity which contributes to that future, even if it is only that individual's own."
-Martland, Religion as Art, Pg 17
(For more photographs and expanded explanations of all projects, click on the title of any piece)
Medium: Performance, Mixed Media Sculpture
Dimentions: Variable
Duration: 2-4 hours, 2-3 times a week for 5 weeks
Year Completed: 2013
The fool is an installation and performance about trying to break the unhealthy patterns that are perpetuated in romantic relationships.
Often it seems, so many people repeat the same relationship stories over and over again throughout their lives. The repetition and recycling of relational problems is a common story, and is often due to an individual's unwillingness to change their own pattern. This installation is about the futile actions of an individual unwilling to get up and change their own cycle, all the while praying that it will end.
Medium: Performance
Duration: 6 hours
Completed: 2013
It is easy to get hung up on expectations about how an interaction should be or what certain relationships should look like. It is a common experience for human beings to expect things from other people, and be disappointed when their desires aren't always met. In Expectations Change Everything, the artist creates a ritual to allow her to release some of her own presumptions, and come to a place of contentment and acceptance of what is real.
Focusing on a specific relationship that she wanted to change her sense of attachment to, the artist writes down every bit of correspondence between herself and the individual. These pieces of paper are then sewn into a costume that the artist puts on her body.
Desiring to come to a place of release and acceptance, the artist wears the paper suit into her bathtub, and watches as the words dissolve and fall away, bringing her back to the present and to what is real.
Title: Don't Pause
Medium: Performance, Nail Sculpture
Dimentions: 6' 8" x 6'
Duration: 16 hours
Uncompleted: 2013
Don't Pause is an installation and performance about an artist's drive to create and reach an audience, while often failing in that task.
Pounding in nails one by one to create a sculptural installation on the wall of her studio, the artist spends days and around 16 hours working on a sculpture that will read to her audience in the way she wants it to. Through the stress on her body, the artist reaches a limit where she is unable to continue, leaving her audience confused as to the unfinished writing on the wall.
Title: The Siren Project
Medium: Performance, 120mm film
Duration: 4 hours
Completed: 2013
The Siren Project is a performance piece that deals with the societal dichotomy placed on men and women. Focusing on the Greek myth of the Sirens, the artist sets out to kill the ancient archetype of the femme fatale. Through the death of this archetype, the artist is able to release confining societal views, and emerge from a ritually invoked miming of death into a cathartic rebirth. Following the tradition of the Eleusinian mysteries, the artist is reborn from death possessing the secrets of eternity, and is freed from all anxiety.
Title: Nature Preserve Performance
Medium: Performance,
Duration: 45 mintues
Completed: 2012
Nature Preserve Performance is a performance done in the parking lot of a large shopping centre. In it the artist creates a ritual where she tries to call to the "gods of nature" to replace the trees that previously lived there. The ritual ultimately does not achieve the goal of making trees appear and the artist leaves the space essentially as she arrived in it. Then intent of the performance is to discuss how difficult it is to replace natural space after it has been removed, and how "faith" will not fix the damage done to the environment. If the damage to environmental space is to be repaired it will require a lot more effort than prayer.
Medium: Performance Photographs, Publication
Duration: 3 months
Completed: 2012
Endorphins and Oxytocin is a publication and a performance project by artist Jodi Sharp. The publication consists of poetry, writings, as well as a three month performance and documentation of the artist wearing a weaving that represents all of her old lovers.
In this project the artist questions what love is, how we are capable of it, and how it is possible that we can feel the same feelings for different people again and again.
Title: Dealing with Loss
Medium: Performance
Duration: 4.5 hours
Completed: 2011
Dealing with Loss, is a series of performance photographs that talk about the rituals we need to create for ourselves in order to properly grieve. Coming from a religious background where the rituals are are already created to mourn the loss of human life, the artist questions what happens when a person no longer subscribes to those specific rituals or beliefs.
Dressing in an outfit that represents her own human life, and the skeletal remains that will one day be her own body, the artist creates a succession of actions with the intention of creating a new space where loss can be acknowledged, felt, and released.
Working with her own symbol for unnecessary loss- the skull of a moose who has been shot by hunters who did not take away or use the body, the artist ties herself to its remains. Walking in the cold, staying with the body, tying and untying herself, the artist stays, freezing and mourning, for over 6 hours. Finally, when some sort of release is felt, the artist gives up the corpse back to its natural habit, leaving it to its natural process of decaying back into the universe.
Title: I am animal
Medium: Performance, video, paper sculpture
Duration: 9.5 hours
Completed: 2011
I am animal, was undertaken as a continuation on the theme of dissolving the stereotypical human form into something more naturalistic. In this piece the artist wove and sewed paper onto her body to make a cocoon that would allow her to transform.
Throughout the nine and a half hour performance the artist focuses on the breaking down of self, the changing of her identity into something that is more nature based and merging into the environment. The intention was to achieve a deeper personal connection with the world around her through the loss of her own visual identity.
The time reduced video of this performance was then projected onto the relic of the cocoon that the artist eventually cuts off of her body, having, eventually, to return to the world of her own form.
Medium: Performance
Duration: 9 hours
Completed: 2011
Seeking to Worship in the Wilderness, was a day-long performance done within the confines of Montreal city.
Working from the distopic reality of human separated from nature, the artist walks with a skeletal remnant of a naturalistic form. Through a nine hour performance, the artist walks and walks, stopping to try and perform ritualistic acts in the streets and alleys of Montreal. Desperately trying to reclaim city space and make it into an expanse where nature could still be regarded and even worshiped, the artist essentially fails, but is successful only in the temporary imprint of a different sort of image within the city limits.