Performance 1

 

"Sit still look pretty"

https://youtu.be/kwcD2VSaFHY

My performance is a form of self-evaluation, it is a performance of me styling my sister’s hair which is a part of her identity. Everyone has different forms of self-love and self-care and one that I and my sister share is how we treat and take care of ourselves together, or even on our own. Your hair can symbolize a new phase in your life a new beginning. The performance also shows my sister applying makeup to her face. Makeup is something that can change your appearance. It also helps express a person’s personality and creativity. An article about Cindy Sherman, says “Sherman reveals the eternal human impulse to transform the actual body into the desired image.” Me doing my sister's hair or her doing her makeup or even me doing my hair correlates with that action, it is allowing the person to fulfill an image of beauty. 

This performance is meaningful because women living in this society are always evaluated on how they look and made sure their look is up to their part. In society, if you have certain hairstyles or your hair is a certain way, or a certain texture society will have something to say about it. Society creates unrealistic images of beauty. Cindy Sherman changes her identity so many times in her work. She says, “Each character’s appearance is entirely artificial and, as such, provides no reliable clues to identity.” it is impossible to determine a character's identity from their appearance, as all appearances are entirely artificial. A female’s appearance out in the street is what will be her first appearance but that’s not who they are not. 

The performance I can say is “sit still and look pretty” because my sister is sitting down in front of a mirror and putting on makeup and I'm doing her hair. Women have this idea that they always must look perfect or look a certain way to be accepted in society’s eyes. But to me, the performance is about comfortability and dressing and looking how they would like to look.  In The Ugly Beauty of Cindy Sherman, it states, “They are some of the first pure protagonists in Sherman’s work: These women are not metaphors, they are not waiting to be represented, rescued or destroyed.” Women don’t need someone to tell their story for them they can tell their own story. The song I choose in the background to play is “sit still, look pretty” by Daya because it perfectly describes what women are told to do. How they are supposed to act. 

The performance is more of a comfort many people would say that it is a materialistic lifestyle or just being focused on your looks or that you seem like that's all you care about, but it is about my own comfort. It is who I am as a person it is one of the things I care about. The performance is meaningful to me because this is who I am as a person this is who she is as a person. This is me. It relates to performance art because this is behind the scene of my everyday life behind the scene of what I have to do before I leave my house. It gives the outsider an inside view of my life. 

Yoko Ono: Sit down, look at yourself in the mirror, and give yourself a compliment.