Clodagh Delahunty-Forrest

NEW MEDIA 

Instagram: @performer_clodagh.df

Raising my body’ is a feminist body performance investigating how the female body responds to its painful cycles. Experimenting with art writing and spoken word, the conversational performance creates a modern dialogue centred on the artist’s personal relationship with her body. She describes this relationship as “transformational”. 

Period pains, childbirth and menopause are heavily stigmatised and misrepresented in popular media with many women expected to embrace this pain in their daily lives. Responding to societal expectations, this performance documents the emotional turmoil this can cause. 

To portray this, the artist uses Snapchat AI filters to create two alter egos: her younger and future self. Communicating with these autobiographical characters, the physical and digital female body merge. Continuing the legacy of 20th century body performers such as Carolee Schneemann, ‘Raising my body’ focuses on the female body, its pain and what connects the different versions of womanhood together.