We Always Carry Our Body. 12 October 2016. Petra Gut Contem. Zürich

We Always Carry Our Body

The main focus of performance artist Sophie Dupont revolves around the body and the mind. Since the 1960s performance artists have used their legs, arms, and torsos to explore the world around them. We Always Carry Our Body build upon this artistic tradition. It seeks to place the concept of the body as a medium and its relation to the psyche into this exact time and society.

Dupont’s meditative praxis opposes the rush, control, and speed of the digital era. She re-quires full attention, insisting on contemplation, time, and chance. She sacrifices her body to the viewer – she can be torn apart and put together again and again without her ever having total control of the situation.

Dupont has two bodies. One in flesh and blood and the other in brass.
She carries both of these bodies in her performance, creating a poetic and aesthetic expres-sion through the use of different materials. The use of the color ultramarine refers back to the Roman Empire where the Romans would cross the ocean to Persia to get hold of it. Ul-tra meaning “on the other side” and Marine meaning “ocean”, ultramarine would become the symbol of wisdom and value. The use of brass is based on Dupont’s fascination with re-ligious charms, also called milagros, often used as votive offerings in Latinamerican coun-tries. These charms create a direct connection between body, psyche, and a spiritual dimen-sion. Therefore a charm depicting a heart can be sacrificed with the purpose of recovering from a heart condition or heartbreak.

Dupont’s performance is not only about sacrifice but is also about raising questions without demanding any answers. It inscribes itself in the universal and perhaps eternal changing concepts of how we think about the body and how we think about the mind. Is it even pos-sible to separate body and mind from each other?

Dupont wishes to create a personal room for reflection in a world where not many things are certain – except that We Always Carry Our Body.
Text by Michelle Korbø Moran
Video filmed by Frank Gut. Edited by Linea Ojala