Anna Perach: Spidora

Opening performance
24 March 2022

Extract from Anna Perach's performance on the occasion of Spidora, her first solo exhibition in the UK at Edel Assanti.

 

Spidora is the exhibition's protagonist: a woman-arthropod hybrid in the form of a wearable sculpture, inspired by a Victorian illusion invented by the American magician Henry Roltair. This entertaining act, which toured America with travelling carnivals, presented a curious beast that had a real woman's head grafted onto the body of a spider, jarring contrast of female beauty with monstrosity. Perach's sculpture and performance elaborates this 'hideous' form. From a vivid tufted body, multiple body parts including heads, hands, breasts and legs, protrude and accentuate the character's contradictions: she is both feminine and grotesque, hidden and exposed, human and animal, powerful but a victim of her condition.

 

Performer: Michaela Cisariková
Movement Director: Luigi Ambresio 
Sound: Jamie Hamilton
Video: Dor Even-Chen