PLASTIC DORIANNE IN LOVE (Performance by Beatriz Millar)
Beatriz Millar's artistic research on the many contradictions of our times continues with an innovative and challenging performance centered on ideas of essence and purity, entitled Plastic Dorianne in Love.
In preparation for this performance, the artist undertook an intensive vocal training that lasted over one year, targeted at discovering and mastering her real, unadulterated voice. Using her voice as the medium, Millar intends to break aesthetic and formal conventions focusing on the essential, employing her breath as the vessel of communication between her heart, her emotions and the world.
The Plastic Dorianne is the manifestation of Millar’s alter ego, presented in this performance as a silicone life size sculpture resembling the artist herself with exaggerated, hypertrophic features. This plastic clone seems to convey all the physical qualities sought after in our contemporary times. With her matte and toned skin, pumped up lips, large eyes, bulging breasts and fit body, Dorianne is encountered by the viewer while seated at a black, self-playing piano decorated by Millar with tribal tattoos.
By way of these white-on-black drawings the artist recalls the tattoo trend popular in today’s Western culture, where the obsession with exhibitionism is matched by the reluctance to proudly carry wrinkles and scars, marks testifying our journey through life yet abhorred and disguised because of their revelatory and sincere qualities. The piano tattoos and the many cosmetic surgeries that Dorianne seems to have undertaken evoke the ideas of mask and disguise addressed by Millar, who cleverly creates a context in which the viewer encounters the epitome of fakeness and superficiality counterbalanced by the immaterial power of the artist’s voice, here played as an archaic musical instrument, connecting the physical realm - the flow of air caused by the expansion of the diaphragm - and the emotional realm.
The overall punk-rock, aggressive look of Plastic Dorianne is distanced by the musical repertoire chosen for the performance; a selection of eleven heartfelt love songs from the 30s, 40s and 50s interpreted by Beatriz Millar, who will be singing in the exhibition space wearing the same outfit and makeup of her enhanced clone, causing a visual and temporal short circuit. Moreover, Millar’s vocal performance has been recorded on CDs that will be available in the exhibition space for the performance attendees. The chosen songs exude passion, sentiment, playfulness and arrogance, covering a wide spectrum of emotion channeled and conveyed through the artist’s voice to her audience. Far from seeking musical perfection, Millar is determined to communicate in her most pure and un-modified voice, freed from constructions and constrictions.
The artist suggests a reflection on the efforts we dedicate chasing the illusion of eternal youth and beauty, consequently suppressing the nurturing of our inner self, which suffers in its imprisonment. If not utter self-deception, Millar seems to ask what is the ultimate purpose of a pointless battle against time. In fact, the obsessions we have developed for our outer “shell” often result in tragicomic narcissistic attempts that serve nothing but to reveal the weakness of the matter we are made of and the superficiality on which most human interactions are based. Thus, for the artist, one’s voice remains the strong bulwark of the heart, able to reveal weakness or strength, anger or composure, remaining unaffected by tragic attempts of fighting this battle in the name of shallow aesthetic contemplation.
Like a contemporary Dorian Gray, Millar wishes her synthetic counterpart Dorianne could absorb troubles, psychological conflicts and anxieties leaving her in a state of peaceful consciousness. Instead of hiding her counterpart from view like Oscar Wilde's character, the artist exhibits Plastic Dorianne in all her glorious beauty as an attempt at the disembodiment of truth from the physical form it inhabits. It certainly is not an easy task, being naked and exposed requires sacrifice and courage. The songs chosen by Millar are filled with melancholy. Almost all of them were written and performed during times of war and address the malleability and contradictory nature of human sentiments, often referring to the illusion of love. With Plastic Dorianne in Love, Millar reaches a new level of consciousness, putting aside diabolic pacts and appearances to concentrate on purity, seeking in her voice the immaterial, tormented essence of love.