MIRROR BOX Performance (Milo Moiré)
What happens when a woman puts her sexuality in a mirror box on public display, assertively takes the initiative and lays out clear rules for the intimate interaction?
So performance artist Milo Moiré wears a trapezoidal skirt made up of mirrored surfaces; a rectangular opening at the front is closed off by a red curtain. With a megaphone she invites passers-by to reach into the opening for 30 seconds, in order to touch her vagina.
“I am standing here today for women’s rights and sexual self-determination. Women have a sexuality, just like men have one. However, women decide for themselves when and how they want to be touched and when they don’t”
The consensual nature of sexual acts becomes a symbol here. Moiré has additionally taken the liberty of showing female desire, thus giving women a sexual voice. The artist supplements the dominant image of the female body as a mirror of male desire through the illumination of the libidinous black box of woman.
Inevitably it is not only one’s own self that becomes recognizable through the Mirror Box. The audience’s reflection on the mirrored box simultaneously becomes a visual metaphor for the role reversal from voyeur to the object of view: a constant play of inversions analogous to our roles in the digital world.
Milo Moiré’s performance “Mirror Box” is a societal reflection of human sexuality. It’s a expanded reenactment of the “Tap and Touch Cinema” (1968) and a homage to the Austrian artist VALIE EXPORT, who was already fighting for women’s rights in the 1960’s through artistic actions. Artist Milo Moiré utilizes her body as an instrument, even as a weapon, in order to depict and disrupt power structures. She aggressively seeks the feminine expression of sexual self-determination and explores the boundaries of art and bourgeois morality.
