The Performa 2021 Biennial, which took place in New York City last autumn, markednot only Harlem-based artist Tschabalala Self’s first foray into performance art, but also into creating footwear and clothing. (She had already created bags, having worked with Louis Vuitton for itsArtycapucines bag project, in 2019.)Her performance piece for the event,Sounding Board,showcaseda collaboration with Uggon a collection that features knee-highheeled and flat micro boots, roomy tote bags and outerwear, riffingon motifs, tones and patterns idiosyncratic of both Self and the American brand.Sounding Board: performance, costume, and artworks intertwineWhen Self was invited to participate in the Performa 2021 Biennial – the ninth edition of the performance art-focused event, themed around New York City and its emergence from Covid-19 restrictions – the painter, who explores Black American identity through expressive, warped, collagedportraiture, wasn’t sure she could accomplish it. But it was the link between performance and storytellinginSelf’s paintings, often based on fictionalcharacters – couples, fathers, a coquette, shoppers in bodega stores – that spurred her on.‘It was a matter of expanding that narrative,’ she says,‘shaping a play, creating characters’ internal dialogue and bringing my visual language into set design.’Sounding Board, an exploration of gender and power play, saw a male and female actorengage in dialogue that progressed from the literal to the nonsensical, where narrativeswapped and intertwined. The performance, set in a domestic ‘liminal space’ – an evocation of the settings of Self’s paintings – featured staging formed from colourful,patterned, painted boards and oil paint projections. Clothing has particularresonance in Self’s mixed-media artworks,which incorporate fabric, such as an out-grown pair of jeans,alongside a bricolage of chipboard, plasterglass and mirror, and depictpieces likeNew Era caps, sequined handbags andbasketball vests. So she was keen to create cohesion between costumes and performance and her own artworks.‘I wanted the costumes to be more pared down than in my paintings, so they weren’t distracting,’ Self says.‘So I turned designs from thepaintings into repeated patterns.’
