Emotional Labour is a performance exploring labour issues through ecology.

Emotional Labour is the need to suppress your own emotions, specifically to fit and be accepted in your work context. 
This durational performance analyses the delicacy, precarity, vulnerability of working in the art world and in this society in large. 

While co-existing in the same small tub with an albine axolotl (endangered aquatic salamander) for 2.30 hours, the artist puts her body to the risk of toxic chemicals released by the axolotl touching other animals, while the fear towards the axolotl transforms into a playful relationship.

P.S. the axolotl is named Lolita.

Video


Performed at DfbrL8r Performance Art Gallery (Chicago, IL, USA) as part of Bubbly Creek Performance Art Assembly
16th June 2019

Curated by Angeliki Tsoli

Emotional Labour

Thorny Wash Off is part of a collection of works around the sexual harassment. 

Thorny Wash Off is a ritual of re-appropriation of harmed bodies and minds. It wants to denounce the facts and relinquish the fear.

Duration: 3 hours
Materials: thorny branches, 96 red balloons, two metal buckets filled with 3.5litres of water each, 100grams of rose petals, 100grams of olive leaves, one porcupine quill, cord



Performed as part of Visions at the Nunnery
Event curated by Cinzia Cremona and Tessa Garland.
Bow Arts, London (UK)
Saturday 26th November 2016

Thorny Wash Off

As part of a research project around expectations, this work is the result of the collaboration with Manuel Vason.


Expectations

(H)anger is a performance that revolves around the debated theme of abortion in Poland. Who has the right to choose what to do? 
(H)anger questions the freedom to choose abortion, the violation of human rights when this freedom is denied, the consequences of illegal abortion practices, the lack of dialogue between incompatible points of view.

Duration: 30 minutes
Materials: hangers, roses...

(H)anger

Parlour is the outcome of researches about Cyprus being one of the major destination for human trafficking (mainly of sex workers).

Though the engagement in a one-to-one performance, Parlour roots around the emotional tightness and the depriving vulnerability of prostitution- taking distance from its literal reading and focusing on a sensory discovery.

The performance took place inside the pizza oven of the gallery courtyard. The performer spent 6 hours inside the oven among 30 kilos of grapes.

Duration: 6 hours
Materials: oven, grapes, hair, needles, scissors

Parlour was performed as part of Live Art Series organised by Sensorium Space at Point Centre for Contemporary Art (Nicosia, Cyprus), 2016.

Parlour

You sit down on the tube. Someone approaches you. All of a sudden you are an object, that someone treats you as an object. 
If you are a woman you know what I am talking about.
Not always sexual harassment is physical; never underestimate words, looks...psychological harassment can destroy you.

This project is an intervention originating from an episode of sexual harassment I have experienced. 
You Give Me Creeps is the outcome of a research regarding the psychological consequences of sexual harassment in public spaces, on public transports.

You Give Me Creeps

Sharing is Caring is a performance based on love letters.
During the performance the audience is invited to read letters collected in envelopes put for two weeks during April 2016 in four coffee shops in South East London.
People visiting the cafes where invited to write a letter to someone they loved/used to love.


Sharing is Caring

Meant to be sweet is an autobiographical work around the theme of home. 
What do you think you are supposed to be according to what your relatives expect from you? My answer: sweet and pure.
In the performance I got my body covered in 1Litre of honey, which made me sticky as expectations and unsure as a pure mindset.

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Giulia Mattera

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