The Black Veil
2000
Performance
Materials: Durational performance
Collection: Courtesy the artist.
After a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne:
‘Elizabeth, I will,’ said he, ‘so far as my vow may suffer me. Know, then, this veil is a type and a symbol, and I am bound to wear it ever, both in light and darkness, in solitude and before the gaze of multitudes, and as with strangers, so with my familiar friends. No mortal eye will see it withdrawn. This dismal shade must separate me from the world: even you, Elizabeth, can never come behind it!’
Nathaniel Hawthorne, ‘The Minister’s black veil’ (1836)
The performer/s cover their faces with a black veil, this gesture adapting to different contexts and circumstances. For the exhibition in M HKA, the performers will cover their faces with a black veil on the following dates, as a gesture of mourning commemorating certain regrettable historical events:
February 11, Islamic Revolution Day (observed on 11 February) marks the victory of the Islamic Revolution or Iranian Revolution in 1979. Also, in 1916, Emma Goldman was arrested for lecturing on birth control.
March 11, the 2004 Madrid train bombings were a series of coordinated, nearly simultaneous bombings against the Cercanías commuter train system of Madrid, Spain, on the morning of 11 March 2004 — three days before Spain’s general elections. The explosions killed 193 people and injured around 2,000.
April 15, 1922, the Titanic sank.
May 13, 2012, forty-nine mutilated bodies were found dumped along a highway near Monterrey, Mexico’s third-largest city, according to officials.
First performed in public space in Brussels (2000)
