A Labour of Love?

In My Nemesis, the graduation project of Manizja Kouhestani developed for the drama programme at KASK Gent, we encounter two caricatures of the ‘female artist’ that have emerged since the performance scene in the 1980s and have haunted artists ever since. What does it mean to put a female body on show: does it serve the male gaze or does it reject it? What form(s) can empowerment and self-representation take? Kouhestani and co-performer Fiene Zasada dare to approach a complex discourse, yet falter when it comes to standing vulnerably before it.

Banasha Suleimankheil (Manizja Kouhestani) is reciting a monologue while moving around on a table, a raw metal skeleton with a triangular surface covered with inox elements sewn together. The tabletop is slightly tilted towards the audience. Its reflective surface is almost like a mirror that is too old to still produce a clear image. The table is in fact a sculpture that her friend and fellow artist Katarzyna Kozyra (Fiene Zasada) created in the context of her work Abortion Table, an act, or rather a symbol of protest against restrictive abortion laws – the sewing lines evoking wounds, recently cut, still open, or never fully healed. Banasha arrives at the end of her message, a denunciation of traditional gender roles and a warning of their violent consequences on women’s bodies. ‘And these are the words that emerged from your vagina?’ ‘I call it textual labour.’ An ingenious line.

My Nemesis consists of one long dialogue between the two personas, their fictive artworks serving as a means to structure the conversation in clusters of different themes both artists evoke in their respective practice. The play’s title is also the name of the retrospective exhibition of the multidisciplinary artist Kozyra, who uses the stage to reflect on her relationship with the performance artist Suleimankheil. They are both struggling with their own position as ‘female artists’ with a feminist agenda, the discrepancy between their artistic intentions and the public reaction and (mis)interpretations creating a hollowing gap, a void that swallows their arguments, that cancels their protests. Both artists have been a great inspiration to each other throughout their career, but success has fuelled a jealousy that ultimately turns them against each other.

The density of the discourse of My Nemesis however misses a dramaturgy beyond the arguments around feminist art.

The dialogue is the centre piece, at times turning into a heated fight, at others ebbing into half-hearted apologies. It is interrupted by solo moments during which the personas shed more light on their dark selves. In these moments, their body language supports the construction of their characters. Their respective movement qualities reflect their essential differences: Kozyra moves through the space in sharp, cutting, angular movements, taking large steps, quickly and with fervour, sucking on her vape as if sucking on life itself. Suleimankheil is connoted as spiritual, organic, connected to her inner turbulences, her movements are presented in a fluid and visceral way. The precision that the theatre makers dedicate to building the fiction of their personas is commendable: at the exit, the audience is handed out a catalogue with a chronological archive of the artworks and performances of Suleimankheil and Kozyra.

The density of the discourse of My Nemesis however misses a dramaturgy beyond the arguments around feminist art. The many issues at stake here – female empowerment, the artist’s responsibility towards their subject, bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, sexual violence – are dealt with at such a pace that the arguments and illustrations become symbols of a debate that ‘we’ have mistakenly dismissed as a thing of the past, based on the false assumption that Western societies have left behind the need for explicit engagement with feminist issues. Although the text deals extensively with the historical conception of feminist art, it remains superficial in its attempt to place this discourse in a contemporary context. The performance has subversive potential, the intensity with which the actors place themselves on stage and in their characters manifests an urgency that causes a stir in the audience. Unfortunately this urgency is lost in detachment. If the position of the artist’s body within her own work is still a relevant and contested topic, if public presentation still holds the danger for violent responses, then why are we not angrier, raging with the desire for revenge?

The real nemesis is the reality within which the artists operate; a public debate that is shaming the subject that dares to confront them.

I’m missing an attempt to scrub the murky surface of that old mirror to reveal the faces of the creators behind the façade. As a new generation of female/feminist makers, how do we position ourselves within this debate? Instead of offering empathy, the two personas discredit each other to the point that one artist is driven to suicide and frames it as a revenge act against the other. The real nemesis, then, is the reality within which the artists operate; a public debate that, instead of facing the dark truths of its own perceptions and paradoxical expectations, is shaming the subject that dares to confront them. This is certainly no endeavour that can be realised in a single work of art. Rather, it is a call to action that permeates this piece and is directed at all of us. If we cannot offer each other solidarity, we’re failing ourselves.