The Performing Body, by interdisciplinary artist Fev Buchanan, is on show at Gleneagles Townhouse, on St Andrew Square in Edinburgh. Following her election for next year’s RSA New Contemporaries, this is Fev’s first solo exhibition and brings together a series of performances she has presented over a few years.
In these performances, she uses her own body to explore the ‘political and social struggles tied to womanhood and identity’. She also reflects on how our bodies are labelled as ‘well,’ ‘unwell,’ ‘enduring,’ ‘able,’ and ‘disabled’. Fev investigates the body as part of the social system that answers social obligations. At the same time, she draws attention to political and social structures, and the intimate vulnerabilities that may or may not make us feel insecure about our bodies.
Fev’s personal life is reflected in her art: a chronic illness has made her rethink of her own body as well as her existence and absence, and she experienced the difference between a voluntarily suffering body and a differently able body in performing arts, and how we value them. In the exhibition text she states, ‘This work is not just about being unwell. It is about living within unwellness.’
Stepping into the exhibition gallery, the viewer encounters Home, an image from Fev’s sculptural performance piece, exploring ‘themes of self-care and resilience in times of loneliness.’
She used a handmade stoneware ceramic vessel not as an external object, but as an extension of herself, offering the comfort we all need. Positioned as if in a womb, she creates a symbolic space within. Here, she discovers the support and comfort within herself. It’s almost like being a mother to your own self. It is an unprecedented comfort that no one else can offer.
This intimate performance, photographed by You Liang, serves as the opening piece and a hint of what lies ahead. It is not a reflection of vulnerability, but an act of accepting ourselves as we are, while acknowledging a society and political system that only accepts our bodies if they obey the rules of the society.
From the womb-like image, we move to another image of Fev within a handmade stone vessel. My Mother is Mud is a sculptural installation created on Tyninghame Beach in East Lothian, where she abandons her body to the earth, letting the waters of North Sea decide the future. It’s a duality of comfort and vulnerability, fragility and power at once. Positioned at the edge of a cliff, Fev sits in the vessel as water gradually fills the sculpture in an almost intimidating way.
Fev’s art is not all about performing. She values her absence as well. It’s ‘about finding power in absence and claiming space. Some of these images come from performances that lasted hours. Others, only moments. Sometimes I didn’t perform at all. That absence is part of the work. At times absence is the most honest gesture I can make.’ Accordingly, she includes images not only from her performances but also from her periods of absence, giving equal value to both.
Between Weight and Air strikes the viewer immediately with its strong contrast of black and white. The photograph is from the 2024 performance Endurance and Care. This work was inspired by Fev’s chronic illness and her experience of living in an unwell body. It explores physical and emotional endurance. The question is about the value of our bodies. Does endurance raise the value? As explained on Fev’s web site, during the performance, ‘she is repeatedly carrying substantial logs – larger than her own body – across the room, treating each with unwavering care and reverence, as one might tend to a fragile body…’ while an inter-media artist Johanna Khandakar, plays a traditional Chinese brass tongue drum with ‘rhythmic serenity’. As Fev states, ‘The piece invited viewers to share in the physical and emotional toll, reflecting how the exhaustion of overburdened care can erode gentleness toward oneself and others. As her strength waned, her ability to handle the logs with the same delicacy diminished – symbolising the strain of persistent effort.’
It isn’t easy to read this subtext from the photograph, though this is what she wants to create. She deliberately used black and white pictures to withhold the truth: ‘Like my body, they invite assumption, projection, and misunderstanding.’
She prefers to use the term ‘differently-abled’ instead of ‘disabled’, as she discusses whether we have to be constantly enduring, to be valuable and taken seriously: ‘At the core of this exhibition is a differently-abled body in resistance. This resistance encompasses the rejection of the pressure to perform consistently, the avoidance of being read, judged, or simplified based solely on appearance.’
In another series of striking photographs, Fev appears in a hospital gown, standing on a scale and holding logs of various sizes. She explains that during her hospital visits, the focus was placed on her weight as a measure of health. In one image, she weighs 59.40 kilos; in the other, 49.95. These numbers are a dream for some women, a nightmare for others. Being a woman basically equals a constant effort to fulfil societal expectations. These unrealistic expectations are also reflected in Fev’s art.
In Milk Bath Mondays, we are viewing her back, in a bucket we assume is full of milk. Again, she deliberately doesn’t give us the whole picture and lets us make assumptions.
Buchanan is not seeking a common aesthetic ideal, or trying to please the viewer, nor is she trying to upset us. She chooses to be who she is, with her presence and absence, in her moments of functioning and not functioning, she is in front of us: ‘At its core, this work is asking not for sympathy, but to be witnessed.’
Thanks to Omur Sahin Keyif for this review.
