Louise Liliefeldt [South Africa]
Cage

performance 18.00
Saturday 10th May 2003

installation exhibition
Saturday/Sunday 11th - 25th May 2003
14.00 - 18.00
[view by appointment]

From South Africa and based in Toronto, Louise Liliefeldts work is predominately concerned with the politics of identity as it intersects with issues of gender and race. Since the nineties she has been instrumental in
setting up and organising artistic collectives and events in Toronto, most notably the 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival which to date has featured over 140 local and international artists. She has also presented her own work throughout North America and Europe. Of her work for trace: she says:

' For ten years I created performances that were concerned with stasis where control and discipline were held predominately in the body. The mind was allowed, for the most part to travel for hours through transgressive states and although the mind needed to have some control simply to keep the body as still as it was there was often a loss of control and a kind of madness that I would experience as the works progressed over the years. I was creating great tension as the madness held itself tightly in my psyche. It may have appeared to the viewer that I was extremely disciplined and in great control but I believe my mind and body were rarely working in sync. In the last few years I have been working on more action-based performances with a physical process that is readable to the viewer.

In the case of these recent works my mind and body were working together, responding to one another. This process is still new for me and in Cage, a very personal piece, I intend to work through some of these challenges. Psychologically Cage is further development into a piece I performed in 1999 in Quebec City giving expression to a traumatic experience. Physically I am attempting to rectify a performance gone wrong. '

'..disturbing and evocative.' FUSE Magazine, Canada

Presented with the assistance of the Canada Council and
the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada.
Canadian High Commission, London.