When an artist’s own body becomes his/her canvas, then this is also always connected to pain, injuries and modifications. In the case of the big stars of this field of the fine arts, this often leads to grand performative staginess. However, Roberta Lima’s approach to this field of art is a very subtle one, despite all painfulness and political radicalness. This makes this young Vienna-based South American a female counterpart to established performers like Ron Athey or Franco B. Body modification as a stylistic device in her performances serves to make social, physical norms immediately perceptible. In the course of her thesis at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, she explored the correlations of photography, architecture and the culture of body modification. The topic of her latest work 6teen Stitches, in which she manifests her critique of historically as well as socially defined female stereotypes, is the construction and deconstruction of femininity.The question of how a live-performance creates and influences social relations and space will play an important part in this. After the live-performance, the video loops will continue to exist in the form of an installation in Halle 2.

Retrieved from Donaufestival Homepage


“6teen Stitches” was presented in the context of an art and music festival. This time, I asked some of the main questions of my Ph.D. research: “Where should art performances take place? What should be the size of the place? How is the audience going to be like?”.
I decided to investigate these questions by performing in 2 rooms of the festival venue. My objectives were to test two complete room and audience situations within the same artwork. One of the rooms was closed and the audience was very focus and slowly organized the space. In the other room, a lounge area, the audience was very dispersive and sometimes even loud. Some people stayed and watched the work and others just passed by, giving the performance almost a street-like characteristic.