Photo: Nicolas Arthur, courtesy of the artist
Given her background in performance, Alegría Gobeil develops their work through protocols and actions that flirt with self-destructive or dangerous practices. Although some of their gestures can be compared with canonical body-art works — those of Gina Pane, Ron Athey, or Franko B, for instance — a closer examination reveals that Gobeil’s objectives are significantly different. For this artist, wounds are not intended to prove a strong conviction or be a calculated self-sacrifice for art. Cutting is not a metaphor, any more than it asserts the artist’s glorious sovereignty over their own body. Rather, Gobeil performs their wounds in solitary, far from other people’s eyes and their inevitable reprimands.
