Nicola’s multiple-person suit, which looks as medieval as it does futuristic, as benign as it does malevelont. Hanging on the wall and spilling onto the floor, the “suit”, title Night Thing, is a large, dark, blue-black fabric tarp into which are sewn full-body worksuits with zippers and head coverings that hang limply from their shared skin. (It is an actual prop from a performance piece in which individuals don the joint uniform.) Images of some ridiculous circus act, or a prop for a new type of torture come equally to mind, and thus illumine the nature of the body concealed as being both empowered and vulnerable. The fact that the identities of the individual wearers are masked makes them part of a constructed whole, bringing up the issue of how familial and social relationships are often defined/imposed by our physical body.

“Invisible Body” by Gretchen Faust
ARTS Magazine, February 1992
show curated by Alan Jones