​Gentrification Objectification was an endurance performance in a new gallery space in Observatory Cape Town. For 7 hours, I sat on a plinth rolling tobacco cigarettes and arranging them in a mandala-type formation on another plinth beside me. Seated at the door to the gallery space, I invited the audience to help themselves to a smoke by way of placing a cheap box of matches beside the mandala.

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Commenting upon the increasing gentrification of the area, I engaged in this 'lower class' activity as the object of a 'higher class' gaze, bringing a flavour of life outside the gallery walls within the space, and inviting those within to experience that world outside. The rolled tobacco cigarettes were neatly presented in an ordered configuration that was delightlfully and progressively disarranged throughout the night. 

 

The theme of liminality extended from the external circumstances of site and class, to an inner contemplation, where I, as mediator sat engaged in repetitive and ritualistic activity, creating a focus for contemplation that was destroyed with participation. It was this intersection of self and other, inner and outer, order and disarrangement that became a collaborative amorpous artwork, the residual remains of which remained on exhibit.

 

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