General
Source: Daily News
Gaborone — Performance art has been carried on to the contemporary art forum with the aim of challenging the audience to think of art in a new way, breaking what art is, says Kate Kwati.
Speaking at the Thapong Visual Arts Centre after her performance, Kate said her art mainly deals with women issues.
"Women go through a lot and sometimes people see us with make-up on and smiling and do not know the struggles we go through unless you share with someone your pain and sorrow," she said.
She says performance art is art presented within a fine arts context, which is interdisciplinary and combining two disciplines with or without an audience.
She says it involves basic elements such as time, space, the performer's body and the relationship between the performer and the audience.
"This art form is usually presented by the artist and sometimes in collaboration with other performers," she notes, adding that at times the artist goes to the extent of using the audience as part of the performance knowingly or unknowingly.
Kate says performance art came about when artists felt that cannon art forms no longer answered their needs or they seemed too conservative.
"This art form does not only involve action as it at times borrows from other art forms and it is not relatively a 21st century art form as it dates back to the 1960s with artists such as Yves Klein and Dino Buzzati, Yoko Ono and Yayoi Kusama just to name a few," said Kate.
She further notes that most performance artists reference their bodies to put forward a point, the body being used as an artistic medium.
"To some artists the concept has therapeutic connotations as it is meant to address real life issues having an impact on somebody who can relate to what the artist is presenting," she says
"The moment when the audience relates to the performance, when there is a feeling of shock, anger, sadness or even feeling surprised, spells the success of the performance and ignites dialogue in a manner different from what one would get from cannon art forms," notes Kate.
Further speaking on the art form, Kate says performance art is mostly done as an art intervention in a public space and depicts elements of installation art forms and can also be specific.
"Social context in performance art references the body, feminism, sexuality, economic and political issues, and the artist usually performs a theme which has an effect on her as well as tapping on to basic commonly shared instincts and universal issues that may be physical or psychological, issues that address individual fears, concerns and life in general," she says.