Performance: NINA's Dance
Design by Aliyah Winter.
Registration essential
Doors open at 7.30pm, performance at 8.00pm sharp.
No admittance after 8.00pm.
In a one night performance event, NINA will cause the white cube space of the gallery to collide with the true muck of a strip club. This is not (just) a performance: NINA is the artist's stripper persona. When she steps onto the stage and mounts the pole the artist needs to become NINA to enable her to turn on the show. And one thing is on NINA’S mind: Working the room in order to earn enough tips so she can be paid.
Be it a strip-worker or arguably also an artist, is the dance or the hustle the same? When the white cube is so deeply linked to the institutionalisation of art and a voracious art market, being an artist can become a job of performing the hard-sell, appealing to an audience, and delivering a ‘hot show’. And much like the life of a stripper, most artists at some point find themselves in a position of inner-conflict: when personal ethics and, or politics are challenged because someone just offered a price, which would mean banking some real buck. But in the end does the price come at too high a personal cost? Is what the punters want in the end ever enough?
“I am both an unprofessional and professional dancer. I am both fake as hell and as real as skin and fat. The performance is a replication of a 3-song set danced at my local strip club, but set in a gallery with chairs arranged around a stage. With bra and underwear removed in time, expect nudity. This is the front stage, will you tip me?” - Alexandra McFarlane.
This event brings to a close IM/PERFECT a series of art shows exhibited in the Artspace Aotearoa restrooms, curated by Daniel John Corbett Sanders in partnership with NZPC New Zealand Sex Workers’ Collective. The performance NINA’S Dance is a secondary product of working in the local strip scene in Tāmaki Makaurau.
Please note this performance is R18.
You must register to attend at info@artspace.org.nz.