Lenio Kaklea
A Hand's Turn
During the performance A Hand’s Turn visitors are invited to read a text: “I hold a pen with the right hand / move the mouse with the right hand” reads one excerpt. While reading through the instructions the performer’s hands go through a precise choreography. The performance lasts 30 minutes and includes only 2 people at a time. Lenio Kaklea refers to a world guided by oppositions that are obsolete notions today: nature and culture, men and women, public and private, arts and science. Growing up in a communist family in exile, she was raised among questions of left and right.
Informed by Psychoanalysis, feminism and the history of performing arts, the artist holds up a mirror throughout the dance segment of the performance. Through this she invokes performance art from the 60s and 70s as well as Surrealist photography. As a dancer Kaklea grew up with the mirror as an instrument of control, in the way it’s used in traditional dance, but here she uses it here a tool of emancipation and empowerment.