Brain Wash
Vandana
2013
Performance for video
15:27 Minutes
©Vandana The Artist
Courtesy Vandana The Artist & Stiftung Futur
DESCRIPTION
Part of the rituals of self series, Brain Wash uses Henna — a material embedded in Indian marriage and religious ritual — as the site of a psychological confrontation. The text “Wanna Get Rid of It,” tattooed onto the skin alongside the Henna design, stages the dilemma of wanting to un-follow a ritual while remaining bound to it — the tension between the wish to break free and the social and moral obligations that hold the pattern in place. The act of washing becomes an attempt to remove not just the design but the programming it represents.
I appear wearing white in a shower room, unveiling the Henna design on my legs. I try to wash the text with soap, brush, foot filer, tooth brush, foot cleaner and water. I treat my legs as an object.
Vandana 