The Enfolding Face is a series of live performance works which reference mythological/traditional motifs, theatrical aesthetics, Butoh and the gothic in order to place the primal, desperate and erotic cycle of birth and death inherent to human existence within the physicality and emotional traces of the body. The series is accompanied by a collection of supporting works including photographic prints and sculptural objects, and their presence as independent works serve to expand the narrative of the project into a broader cross-disciplinary space.
In Lupercal, a ritualistic birthing scene takes place within a very small and intimate cave-like gallery space. The body here performs automatically in a cyclic space between life and death, born to and from ancient remains and embodying a state of physical flux. The performer slides out from the womb of an animal-like carcass and begins a performance of improvised actions with a set of clay bones: they are broken to pieces, tied together and onto the performer's body with woollen yarn, and used to draw primitive linework onto the floor just centimetres from the feet of the audience. A ceremonial cloth depicting primordial imagery of interweaving human and animal forms hangs above the scene, and a sound piece created entirely from manipulated audio samples of the artist's own body (vocals, breath, licking lips and clicking fingernails) plays from the duration of the performance - its organic rhythms working in conjunction with the sounds produced in real-time by the performer's actions.
Lupercal takes its title from the cave in which, according to the legend of the origin of Rome, the twin babies Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf. The use of this name implies a parallel to that ancient place of human-animal maternity deep within the earth, as well as a narrative of ancestral origin.
