Abstract
In this manifesto, multidisciplinary artist Nina Arsenault sets out the working principles, practices, and philosophies that undergird her performance work. In this work she includes the shaping of her body through plastic surgery, voice training, and exercise, and the adornment of her body in feminine clothing, makeup, fake hair, as well as all of her more artistic autobiographical representations in her photographic images, her writing, her plays and performances, her social media posts, and so on—all of which she sees define as self-portraiture. In this manifesto, Arsenault elaborates how she elides the boundary between the quotidian actions of living and disciplinary traditions of self-portraiture in her life as art practice.
When the soul wishes to experience something, she throws an image of the experience out before her and enters into her own image.
—Meister Eckhart, German mystic
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Notes
- 1.
I also started to work with other artists on these projects—a process I call collaborative self-portraiture.
- 2.
I learned a similar practice of working, inspired by the tutoring and dramaturgy of Judith Rudakoff, during my MFA Playwriting thesis at York University, 1998–9. I am grateful for this mentoring.
Bibliography
Andrews, Robert. (1987) The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (London: Routledge).
Murray, Edward. (1976) Fellini the Artist. (New York: F. Ungar).
Ovid. Metamorphoses. (1933) Trans. Frank Justus Miller. (London: W. Heinmann).
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Arsenault, N. (2022). A Manifesto of Living Self-portraiture (Identity, Transformation, and Performance). In: Halferty, J.P., Leeney, C. (eds) Analysing Gender in Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85574-1_11
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