Sea Fist

In Sea Fist the artist performs, in the bubbling waters of Vulcano (Eolian Islands, Italy, Volcanic Attitude International Festival 2023), a minimal sexual practice: her fist repeatedly penetrates the surface of the sea; it is a hole of water and squirts. From her fist the shockwave propagation dissipates as a craving on the water surface. The underwater fumarola responds with bubbles of sulfurous steam: hot volcanic gases emmitted from rocky holes in the seabed, in corrispondence of active volcanic activity. The sea surface appears rebollent. Or an answer, like the artist likes to think, to the fisting. The live performance is about the sensual and contrasted relation between body and sea, and about the emergency to queering the heterormativity/homonormativity that we project on nature, as on animality. Michel Foucault considered that the fisting practice could go beyond normative sexualities, towards a de-masculinization and de-genitalization of sexual expression (in Le Gai Sovoir, 1978). In this case, Foucault's narrative is also extended to the sensuality that characterized our physical experience with the seascape.

Technical Details
20 minutes live performance in the sea; 3 b/w prints on photographic paper from negative film, each 15x21 cm, edition of 3; hd live performance video documentation realized by Volcanic Attitude. Video/photo credits: Davide Pompejano (Pomona Pictures and drone footage by Emilio Messina)

Exhibitions / Collaborations / Publications
OPR Gallery, Milano, solo show; Volcanic Attitude, Volcano, Eolian Islands, live performance.
Antennae Journal | Queering Nature | Issue #63 | curated by Giovanni Aloi