“Self Portrait as My Mother, as an Actress, as a Painter, as a Stranger” 2009 / 2013

Version 3, performed by Sonia Viviani and Jonathan VanDyke
1/9unosunove Gallery, Rome

[ A woman arrives at an exhibition with paint dripping from her purse. ]

On Tuesday November 12, Jonathan VanDyke will present his 3-hour performance work Self Portrait as My Mother, as an Actress, as a Painter, as a Stranger. The piece, which appeared most recently in New York City at On Stellar Rays gallery, appears in Rome in a new, site-specific version featuring the actress Sonia Viviani and accompanying VanDyke’s solo exhibition “Oltre l’oblio” at 1/9unosunove. The piece, which is performed in silence, was rehearsed entirely through movements, giving the artist and the actress an opportunity, in VanDyke’s words, “to develop the piece from the inside out, finding a way in which to communicate intuitively, the same way that a painting from Giotto or Masaccio communicates content without words”. VanDyke, who is participating in the Qwatz residency program while in Rome, has for several years researched the work of director Michelangelo Antonioni, and his research into the Director’s early 1960’s trilogy, especially the film L’eclisse, continues in Rome. Antonioni’s use of ambiguity, his characters whose identity is in constant flux, and his long passages of silence, are quoted in VanDyke’s piece. Performance is a key component of VanDyke’s practice, and many of his object-based works, including the paintings, video, and photography in his exhibition at 1/9unosunove, were made in association with a group of dancers and actors in New York City. His live performances have appeared recently at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York; the Power Plant, Toronto; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; The National Academy Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Scaramouche, New York City; and as part of Performa 11, the New York-based biennial of performance art. This is his first performance in Italy. The piece is durational and viewers may come and go as they please.

Sonia Viviani, born in Rome, met with cinema at an early age. Since her debut in P. Squitieri’s
 I Guappi (1974), she took part in many film and tv productions. From 1984 she started to work in theatre. From 1995 she’s also author and director of theatral peaces for children and from 1998 she’s Artistic Director of Artistidea…teatro ovunque company.

Thanks to: sylviogiardina.com
Make up: Luca Memè